The Erlking

CHAPTER ONE

(Alastor)

No exorcisor harm thee

Nor no witchcraft charm thee

Ghost unlaid forbear thee

Nothing ill come near thee

-- Shakespeare, Cymbeline

Finally, after a week of oppressive heat and sultriness, some lashing showers fell on wizarding London during the night to Monday. Lying on my bed by the light of a candle, I could hear the water drumming on the roofs and pavements of Knockturn Alley. The children next door were shrieking with delight when they ran outside. It was very late at night, but suddenly I felt more awake than I had in days.

But as much as I appreciated the weather becoming cooler, housing under a not-watertight roof was always connected with a certain bother--for the one whose room was situated directly under said roof in particular. When I climbed up the stairs to the roof chamber, I assumed that the noise of the rain would have woken him up. I was surprised to find him sound asleep in his narrow, rumpled bed under the sloping ceiling. Wasn't he supposed to be nervous and excited about the coming day? For the whole last week he had been in turmoil, not able to talk about anything else besides school.

I pointed my wand at the ceiling. One fine day, the gingerbread house would collapse right over us and come down on our heads, but until then I would do as much as I could to bring us as dry as possible through every other rainy day.

"Impervius," I whispered.

Careful not to make any noise, I stepped across the room and took a seat on the edge of his bed. Two things my life revolved around: my job as an Auror (to that I dedicated myself with devotion and enthusiasm) and raising this child (which inspired neither in me).

He, too, normally wasn't able to go to sleep without a bedside candlelight, but tonight--as if preparing himself to sleep in a Hogwarts dormitory with several others--he had decided against his habit. Inwardly I shook my head about this. He understood what he had to do without me having to tell him and he did it with iron discipline. From one day to the next he had overcome his childhood fears. I didn't know if I would have mastered myself at his age.

Despite the change he had gone through, he still looked like he always had in his sleep. He lay on his side as he always did, an arm under his pillow. The hand beneath the pillow clutched his newly purchased wand, of that I was sure. He already couldn't imagine life without it anymore. I, however, to say it frankly, was still bewildered. It wasn't the kind of wand I had expected to choose the boy.

The instant we had gotten home from Diagon Alley after we had bought the wand, I had called upon the services of Waffling's Magical Theory and found what I was looking for. Rowan was among the wand woods explained in the book. What stood there should have reassured me, but had the opposite effect. The wood of sanctuary and protection, I read, intrigued. Excellent for subtle magic. Often used in the procedure of making healing potions. Muggles believed that rowan branches nailed over the doors of their houses would protect them from the impact of lightning, as well as from Dark magic of any kind.

It came like a silent answer to the questions that plagued me. I was troubled--no, whom was I trying to kid? Most parents or foster-parents were troubled when their children left home for the first time, but I was sick with worry that something could happen to the child as soon as he would have left this house in which he had lived for the past five years. And if even some higher force seemed to agree that he was endangered and needed some special protection from evil... What was the meaning of this? What was he destined for that he needed a wand of rowan? At one o'clock in the morning, my fears became somewhat independent.

I sighed heavily, putting a hand over my mouth in an instant, but the child slept on. His shoulder rose and fell steadily with his breathing. Not a troubling or unnerving thought showed on his relaxed features. To be perfectly honest, I liked him best that way. Sitting there, listening to the rain, I remembered my father often joking about my sister and me: Such well-behaved children--when they're asleep.

Silently as I had come, I went downstairs and crawled into my own bed, but the rain went on. As I've always been a light sleeper, I wasn't able to get some rest for what seemed like the rest of the night. I was accordingly nasty when I dragged myself out of bed with the dawn.

I had taken a day off (which had caused the witch who was responsible for the duty rota to smile understandingly) but what awaited me instead of work would probably tear more on my nerves than a sack of Cornish pixies, I thought, watching through the kitchen window how the cool light of the rising sun broke through the eastern clouds.

I was leaning against the sink while going through the luggage with an utterly useful working utensil of mine--I liked to call it my magical eye. The colossal sea-sack came from my own fund, and matched a wardrobe only apparently. In effect, it had been magically made even more capacious. So how was I to know all what the child had let disappear in its (nearly) impenetrable depths? It wasn't for me not to trust a ten-year-old to pack his own stuff. I just wanted to make sure. I wanted to prevent him from getting into trouble at school, for that's what responsible legal guardians do. But did Sev happen to show himself grateful?!

Arms crossed, he leaned in the doorway and deigned to look at me inspecting his possessions. Straggly black hair fell in his face and covered the equally black eyes, but I was sure of him not missing a thing. When I packed the magical eye away and flicked my wand at the luggage with the words "Accio books", he lifted his head to glare at me.

The books (there weren't less than seven apart from the ones he would actually need for lessons) were checked over quickly, and if Sev had grown up in any other household than my own, I would have been even stricter censoring the conglomeration. Thus I put Basics of the Alchemistical Synthesis aside without a comment and held up Most Potent Potions and The Transfiguring Word with the words: "Not until O.W.L.s."

"And that," I stated in my most disastrous tone, holding up a dark red leather volume in a corner of which a tiny pentagram had been printed, drawing a reaction from Sev for the first time as he unfolded his arms, "happens to be on the Ministry index."

My scowl was met by an equally grim look. "You'd better keep it out of reach of children, then."

"You know what you're allowed to touch in this house. And what you're not," I growled in response, scratching my chin. He knew and couldn't have cared less, as we both knew very well. And apart from that: what about outside? Outside was Knockturn Alley. A stronghold of illegal activities of any kind and a melting pot of the Dark Arts.

I was well aware that I was a dead loss in raising a child--not only geographically, that is. In my job, there were reasons, however to make yourself at home here. If one kept constant vigilance--even in Knockturn Alley, one could lead as safe a life as the average Muggle crossing a much used street. I suspected my Gryffindor nature to take over--and I could only hope that a bit of our upright spirit would rub off on the boy.

Not that I would have given myself to any mad hopes that Sev would make it to Gryffindor. Both his mother and father had been in Slytherin, and Sev was the embodiment of everything appreciated in the Serpent House: a crafty, self-willed pureblood, he only seemed happy if he got his own way. Back down were foreign words, resistance no matter from which side was regarded as a challenge, a possibility to match his own slyness against somebody else's (and usually it would be mine). Even in his tender age, he radiated ambition and discontent and a will-force hardly to tame. But I thought of his love of books, and in some hidden corner of my mind still speculated on Ravenclaw. In a way, however, his thirst of knowledge, caused me more worries than anything else.

I thought of our trip to Diagon Alley two weeks ago on the occasion of buying his school supplies, and made a mental memo to murder Frederick Ollivander the next time I would come upon him in a dark alleyway.

In retrospect, it seemed to me as if we had spent the whole morning looking for a wand for Sev. Hardly were we standing in his shop, a rotten feeling already overtook me when Ollivander put a hand under Sev's chin to take a closer look at him whose history he as so many knew better than the boy did himself.

"A child of the fen--as was Slytherin."

I didn't like that at all. I didn't know if Sev could remember Fenland very well; we never talked about it. This had caused me to be in doubt about how much he knew about everything else. To say that we didn't have an open-hearted relationship would be the understatement of the century.

Sev was given wand after wand. I carefully tidied up the mess he caused with them while Ollivander kept looking for an appropriate model, turning the shop upside down. Neither of us adults found this weird (only too well did I remember how long the procedure had taken with Minnie and myself when we bought our first wands here), but Sev was rather embarrassed for being such a difficult client.

All the while, Ollivander had a very certain wand on his mind. He hadn't brought it on because he had sold the equivalent just the day before, and thought it as absolutely not probable that there would be two bearers in the same generation--let alone in the very same year. But the moment Sev's fingers closed around the wand, any doubt vanished. It was intriguing to watch how the link between the wand and his bearer was forged, how the child's magic glowed in a presentiment of the wizard Severus Snape would be one day and how the magical instrument in his hand responded. Sev's black eyes flashed and an expectant smile spread on his face. Yes, I thought, half-amused, half-apprehensive, that's a different matter, isn't it?

Until now, he only ever had busied himself with my old thrown-out school wand. Still, he was infamous on the Alley for his many curses and hexes, which he didn't hesitate to employ if he felt that the situation required it. Of course, one can't grow old in Knockturn Alley without fending off one or another attacker. The children duelled each other with enthusiasm. While I had arrested the parents of at least half their lot at one time or another, they practised their skills for the future. And just as Ada had stood out against the ordinary Dark riffraff, I recognized a special aptitude in her son that divided him from his year-mates.

"Rowan, twelve inches." Ollivander's voice penetrated my thoughts. "With the core of a dragon heartstring." Weightily, he looked at the boy. "Not of just any dragon's heart, however. The string in your wand comes from the Ouroboros-lindworm."

I had to suppress a tormented moan. I just knew what was about to come. My first impulse was to grab Sev and storm out of the shop without saying thank you and goodbye. Away, only away from what awaited us when we lingered here. But I stood there, petrified and could only witness how disaster descended upon us when Ollivander shot a piercing look at Sev from his incredibly light eyes.

"An alchemist's wand, Mr. Snape."

Yep, I thought ironically. It had to be one for Sev, of course. He couldn't do without. There was only a certain number of these wands, and it was popularly believed that they only chose the descendants of Nicolas Flamel--the High House of Alchemy as some said. They bared the Ouroborus, the snake that bites its won tail, on their coat of arms. For outsiders it was fun to know that Phineas Nigellus, Heinrich Grindelwald, Oonagh McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore all had been trained by their six hundred-year-old ancestor. And that's just pointing out only a handful of the great ones of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If one wanted to enumerate them all, Sev's father also would have been on the list. And that was part of the dilemma.

"A subtle instrument, but rather powerful," Ollivander went on. "A fine wand for quick responses, you understand me there?"

"I do." Sev's eyes danced, I rolled mine.

"What is it, Alastor? In this aspect, his wand's very like your own. Mahogany and phoenix feather, 14 inches, if I'm not mistaken?" I nodded. "Just the wand for an Auror."

Sev grinned. "Why, nobody would say: good for hexing people. Or: good for duelling."

"Severus!"

"Alastor?" the child asked back.

Casually, as if he wanted to belie the words about subtlety, he smashed a vase with flowers on Ollivander's table and used "Reparo!" on it afterwards. The owner smiled, which rankled. Why had he done that? Any sign of destructive tendencies in Sev's behaviour made me imagine the worst for his future. Slytherin actually was a minor apprehension of mine. I knew Sev had some innate desire to destroy things, to turn them inside out just to see how they worked. Just because he could.

With a shudder, I asked myself if this feature was hereditary. There had to be a reason after all that Sev was attracted by the wrong things like a moth by the light. I tended to blame his heritage. His fascination by the Dark Arts could be no accident. Well, I surely didn't plan on sitting around and watching how history repeated itself. I should have stopped him much more often from obtaining access to my library. But under no circumstances would I allow him to take his treasures to Hogwarts.

Meaning The Development of the Unforgivable Curses by Elladora Black in particular. This book's whole conception had been classified as philosophically inadequate by the Ministry of Magic. Only because of my professional merit had I gotten a special sanctioning for its property, and this had been long before Sev's attacks on my library.

"Can you imagine what would happen if your Head of House catches you with this?" I tried to appeal to his common sense, mentally biting my own head off at the same time. I wanted him to stay away from the stuff because he recognized that it was bad for all persons involved. Not because he would have to take the consequences of being caught.

"What about the Foe-Glass, anyway?" Sev asked, ever the diplomat.

Unnerved, I let out my breath. We had quarrelled about this before for quite some time and sometimes his trains of thoughts were unpleasantly easy to comprehend. With a Foe-Glass, he always would have been warned in time if some authority person got near him and his... study materials.

"Don't even think about it," I snapped. "The Foe-Glass is staying here. I put protection on it, so nobody except me can touch it."

A fine smirk appeared on his face. "I know. That's why I'm asking."

I should have known. Cursed brat. Instead of asking first, he had tried to just take it by himself, of course. Once more, I felt my aversion towards the Slytherin mentality that allowed just everything as long as the envisaged aim was achieved--and in some very outrageous cases, didn't even shy from confessing having done wrong without a trace of guilt.

Merlin knew my frequent absence from what we called home was a problem I had faced a lot of times in the past. I didn't know what he was doing, I couldn't control him twenty-four hours a day. Not with my job. Speaking of which, I considered it part of my job to prevent underage wizards from getting themselves into dangerous dabblings. Right now, I entertained the thought that his interest still might be of theoretical nature, but nonetheless--not always was it directed at relatively harmless items like my Foe-Glass.

"Severus Snape," I predicted in my most obscure tone. "One fine day you might touch my property and make the unpleasant acquaintance of a Crucio-snapper. And that will be the end of that."

"Why would you start putting Crucio-snappers on your things now," Sev pointed out very truthfully, "when you didn't even do so while it was legal?"

"Watch me, young man," I growled, shoved the rest of his books back into the sea-sack, and went over to the kitchen table to help myself to some breakfast. I made a gesture towards the child--more ordering than inviting.

But Sev had something different on his mind. "Why are they called Crucio-snappers, anyway? They aren't derived from the Cruciatus curse, are they?"

Indeed they weren't. Being affected by one of them hurt horribly, but it was nothing compared to Cruciatus. I could tell that from my own experience. I had never been tempted to let either of them loose on my fellow wizards and witches.

I looked up from my scrambled eggs into the child's thoughtful eyes, having his complete attention for the first time this morning while he waited for an answer, and seriously asked myself if letting him loose on my fellow wizards and witches showed my sense of responsibility.

"Come on," I urged. "Hurry up a bit! We don't have all day to get to the platform."

Instead of sitting down, Sev took his cloak without a comment. He knew my contradictional reactions to his precocious questions. Sometimes I would tell him more than he needed to know and sometimes I would tell him nothing at all. Silently, he followed me through the various safety precautions that surrounded our house and without which an Auror in Knockturn Alley wouldn't have grown old.

Most of my colleagues believed me to be slightly off my rocker for choosing this one of all places to settle down. Most of them lived in the country and used the Floo Network to get to work. Only a few lived in London, and none but me in Knockturn Alley. There was no sense in pretending that I wouldn't have preferred a cottage in Shropshire like the one Algie Longbottom owned or a flat in Diagon Alley, right over Flourish and Blotts, like our new entry Kingsley Shacklebolt. But how was the Ministry supposed to master the problems in territories like Knockturn Alley if decent citizens and guardians of the law alike kept well clear of them?

I had quartered here in full consciousness that my presence wouldn't change the great illegalities and the general vile. But one or two inhabitants of Knockturn Ally perhaps still would be glad that I was there. I never managed to leave my work behind on my desk in the Ministry and be a different man when I got home.

In a way, the child--who reminded me with his simple presence of things I'd rather have forgotten--prevented me from doing so. Regarding his history, it surely was irresponsible to let him grow up here--but then, it hadn't been my idea to become his guardian.

I watched him from the corner of my eye, but he walked alongside me, lost in his thoughts, and didn't notice it at all. Durmstrang always was the first choice for the Knockturn Alley kids and all of Sev's friends went there. But he never complained about being sent to Hogwarts--not after I told him that his parents had been there as well. With good reason I hadn't mentioned what house they had been in. I didn't want him to be influenced in the wrong way when he would be sitting under the Sorting Hat.

We took the way to Diagon Alley where the Portkeys to Platform 9 3/4 would be ready as I remembered from my own school days. Every first Monday in September, we had made the same way from our room in the Leaky Cauldron through Diagon Alley to Flourish and Blotts to let us be Portkeyed to King's Cross station. In seventh year, I finally was accompanied by my little sister. Not by our parents anymore, however.

To my surprise, Sev and I actually made it to Borgin and Burkes at the upper end of the Alley without catching more attention than few quick, curious glances. That early in the morning our "business district"--as I called the part that bordered to Diagon Alley--was still closed.

"Now I'm probably supposed to tell you something like: Take a good look around. You won't come back here for a whole year. If there actually was anything here worth to remember."

"Not for a whole year," Sev replied. "The term's over at the end of June."

"Spare me your hair-splitting. You know what I mean anyway," I scowled at him while we did the last steps that separated us from the light world that lay besides Knockturn Alley. I thought the moment wise to give him a few last instructions concerning his new life.

"You'll realise that at school, many things are different from here. Especially the people you'll have to get along with. They're probably prejudiced."

"Fine, I'll just tell them that my guardian's an Auror and an idealist who can't leave the underprivileged to themselves."

"Now listen," I said impatiently. "The children in Hogwarts are very different from what you're used to. Most of them wouldn't survive for a day out here. So, if some things seem strange to you or someone's stepping onto your toes, try to restrain yourself and don't hex them." I thought about it. "Not at once, and only if there's really a reason."

"All right." He seemed to think about it while we passed by Gringotts and Madam Malkin's and finally arrived at the book shop. As usual on days like these, the whole place was very busy. From both directions, parents and children streamed towards Flourish and Blotts where the Portkeys were handed over as every year.

Sev watched the people and I watched Sev, while we headed for the entry. His black eyes, which were so difficult to read, darted around between the many unknown faces. He didn't seem nervous or excited in the least. I had been both on my very first school day. He was able to adapt himself very well to new circumstances, I reminded myself. I still remembered him as a six-year-old sitting at my kitchen table on his first evening at my place and playing with his food. "I hate rice, but you probably wouldn't know that," he had stated very casually. "What are you fond of?" I had courted his favour. "Spinach," had been the incredible answer. The memory made me grin.

We had set off somewhat early, but I had calculated on the usual great crush. It became almost half past ten until we had fought our way through to a Portkey we would share with the Diggorys. "Hufflepuff?" Sev interrogated their son--a brown-haired, red-cheeked boy who was the year above him.

"That's right." The boy responded, rather astonished.

Sev smiled at me. "I'm going to be in Slytherin."

So, this was that. If only I hadn't let him read that much in Hogwarts: A History. If there was one thing to surely leave a long-lasting impression with the self-willed brat, then it had to be people who rather fling down everything than conform themselves--as good old Salazar had done. Yep, this had to be Sev's taste. Concord destroyed, the legend had been born. Indeed more stories have grown around Slytherin than around any other of the Hogwarts Four--despite (or just because) we knew so much less about him. That last rush of an interest had been in my own school time, subliminal, yet still existed. But I'd rather be damned than telling Sev about the Chamber and fears we had gone through in my fifth year--however exciting he would have thought it.

Diggory counted down and I tried to shake off the dismal and our fellow passengers' disconcerted looks. I could understand them there: not every Auror's ward saw himself in Slytherin.

Seconds later, we found us standing on slightly shaky legs on Platform 9 3/4. I touched his shoulder and guided him through the throng of parents and students in search of a free compartment. Lots of known and even more unknown faces. The first-years mainly held themselves with their parents while the older students roamed around and joined together.

Right in front of us, some boys and girls greeted each other so exuberantly as if they hadn't met for half a century. Among them I recognized my partner's nephew, Frank Longbottom--fifth-year Gryffindor prefect as his badge gave away, and his Uncle Algie's biggest fan.

I had to talk to Algie, it occurred to me just then. I would owl him later, I decided. It was only one day off, but I already wondered what was going on in my absence. Especially at this time. We had a lot to do with the smuggling of Dark Artefacts that had flourished beyond imagination since the Ministry had the clever idea of signing the international contract over relaxing the regulations of magical import and export.

"I'll be fine," Sev interrupted my musings. When I looked down, I saw him glowering at me as if he knew how far off my thoughts had drifted.

I handed the sea-sack over to him. "You think?"

"Of course."

I bowed down to him a little and tried half-heartedly to offer him a farewell-embrace. I seemed to be doing very badly, for Sev told me bluntly, "Don't, Alastor. We look like a bad copy of the happy families here."

He shouldered the sea-sack with an ease that belied its actual heavy weight, smiled at me while parting and said, "I'll write when I get there."

I grimly looked after him as he crossed the platform without looking back. He didn't carry himself very well--what was to expect of somebody who only ever left the house to hang around on Knockturn Alley? And then, he was taller than most of his assembled year-mates here, perhaps that made him a bit awkward as well. For all his slyness and arrogance, he still was just an adolescent among other adolescents over which he didn't have any advantage in biological respect.

I watched him grab the handle and pull himself up with too much force. This and nothing else gave him away. He was nervous, I knew--even if he didn't know it himself.

Very well, I thought when he disappeared inside. There was nothing for me to do now. I could relax just as well, everything ran its course. I took a deep breath when I watched the Hogwarts Express drive up and carry the child off to the north. He probably would forget about writing. Irresolutely, I turned to the exit. Somehow, I didn't look too forward to returning to my house. I changed my mind and went directly at the Ministry of Magic.

After all, we had a gang of smugglers of Dark Artefacts to annihilate.

~

(Lucius)

When I saw him for the first time, he hadn't come as a conqueror, a redeemer or an agitator. He stood at the Manor's door one sultry August evening prior to my seventh year. Just a foreigner. A traveller. A father who wanted to see his child. This, however, was not what I picked up from the assembled wizards' conversations the following day when I sneaked into the dungeons of the manor and promptly was caught.

"What did you hear?"

"I? Nothing."

Without bothering to look at my father, I indifferently made my way back through the dimly lit tunnels, my studies awaiting me. Should he keep his secrets--and make sure that our secret was kept from them.

Later that day, I practically stumbled across him when I entered my father's private drawing room to borrow a book. He slept restfully on the couch under the sloping window, an arm curled beneath his head.

He must have been in his forties then, but he looked not a day older than thirty. Strains of jet-black hair fell into his forehead, barely revealing his ghostly pale face and the dark shadows of exhaustion under his closed eyes. His shoulders lifted and fell in a slow, steady rhythm.

Having forgotten about the book, I tried to steal away without disturbing him, when a soft, powerful voice had me stopping dead in the doorway.

"Ah. That would be Lucius."

I turned around.

He hadn't lifted his head from his arm. He wasn't healthy, I could tell from the sweat on his fine-shaped features and the feverish glow in his eyes which closed and opened as I looked at him--slowly like a reptile's. Yet there was something about this enigmatic individual that made me call him "Sir?" when I addressed him.

I truly wasn't surprised to see that his arm wasn't shaking when he stretched it out.

"Lend me a hand?"

And I did so.