All This Time

ALL THIS TIME

IV: Among the Stars

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

-- T. S. Eliot

"I don't know if I ought to come along on the Hufflepuff expedition," Sev said the following morning, by way of apology to Sirius, who was looking sullen. The boy's shaggy eyebrows raised.

"Why not?" he grumbled.

"I think I'm in enough trouble as it is," Sev replied.

"With us, you mean?"

"Kiernan gave me a year's worth of detentions last night."

Sirius looked so shocked that his jaw dropped open, giving Sev a better-than-desired view of his half-chewed egg. Finally, he swallowed.

"Oi, James!" he called. The Gryffindor glanced up, grabbed his plate, and wandered over. Peter followed him like a puppy.

"Where's Lupin?" Sirius asked.

"Visiting his mum," Peter replied. Sirius gave him a mild 'who asked you?' look, but nodded.

"Sev got a /year's/ detention," he said. James blinked.

"How'd you manage that?" he asked. "Cripes, Sev, even I only got a week for skiving off Transfiguration."

Sev mumbled an explanation.

"I heard 'Slytherin' and 'broomstick'," Sirius said to James.

"I heard 'polish' and 'Kiernan'," James replied. Sev covered his face with his hands in despair, and re-told the story. When he was finished, they were silent.

"You'd think he'd just make it easier on you and kill you, or something," Sirius said finally.

"Would it really be that bad if your grandfather sent you a Howler?" James asked.

"I got one of those once," Peter put in, but Sev cut him off.

"Grandfather'd do more than send a Howler. He'd probably pull me from school or something, and I'd have to go to a Muggle school."

All four boys shivered at the prospect.

"On the bright side," Sirius said finally, "You're going to really ace your History of Magic exam, I bet."

"Bet he makes you do lines the whole time," James added.

"Great penmanship then, huh?" Sev asked. The other boys laughed. Over Sirius' shoulder, he saw Tertius and Thorpe entering the dining hall. They didn't meet his eyes.

"Slytherin bastards," he muttered. "Lied to me /and/ left me to get caught."

"We'll fix them," Sirius promised. "You wait till we pull off this Hufflepuff expedition. When we break into Slytherin we'll make sure they pay."

"Hufflepuff expedition?" Peter asked. James and Sev gave Sirius a pointed look.

"Nothing to worry your head about," Sirius said to Peter. "Run on then, Pettigrew."

Peter looked sullen, but stood and took his plate back to the Gryffindor table, pointedly engaging in conversation with Lily Evans at the top of his voice.

"Poor Lily," Sirius said.

"Poor Lily? Least she can hide from him in the dorms," James answered. "He goes /everywhere/ with me. Titchy little bugger should be in Hufflepuff at /least/."

"Leave off. Let's plan the expedition," Sirius said. "Now you and Sev are going in under the invisibility cloak, but the whole point of taking the pictures is to have someone /in/ them. So we've got to clear out Hufflepuff. Here's what I think we ought to do..."

***

In the end, they left Lupin out of it, though they told him about it; four kids plus a ghost was just too many, and anyway they could tell that he didn't quite approve of their doing it in the first place.

They were supposed to go in on Halloween, but they had to start mischief-making long before then; Sirius bribed Peeves into helping them by giving the ghost access to the Potions supply cabinet, where he promptly stole several large jars and went about for the next two days dropping essence of beetle-eyes or strained fairysweat on people's heads. In return, Peeves crept into the Hufflepuff common room at about a quarter past eleven, and sounded the alarm. Sev and James could hear him through the walls, blaring like a klaxon and telling them there was a fire evacuation. A stampede of Hufflepuffs, with prefects pointlessly attempting to herd them, ran out of the portrait-door, which stood open just long enough for James and Sev to clamber inside.

Sev set up the camera while James arranged two chairs in front of the fire, right underneath the large portrait of Helga Hufflepuff, who looked down on them disapprovingly. They leaned back and beamed at the camera -- it clicked --

Outside, they heard the outraged roars as the Prefects, who realised it had been a prank, found their way back in blocked by Sirius' contribution: a moat he'd conjured with a little help from one of the advanced spellbooks. By the time they'd called the caretaker and had him lay a board across the water, Sev and James were back under the invisibility cloak, and had crept out and down a side-corridor to wait until the Hufflepuffs were back in.

"Did you see them?" Sirius hissed, when Invisible James tugged on his elbow to let him know they were there. "Stampeding Hufflepuffs! It was like watching flobberworms try to play chess, seeing them figure out what's going on!"

"You'll develop the pictures tomorrow, won't you, Sev?" James asked. "If you're going to get a copy to your grandfather by the day after -- "

"Oh bugger," Sirius said softly. Sev, who'd been fiddling with his camera, looked up.

Headmaster Dumbledore was standing in the hallway, smiling slightly.

"Out for a walk, are we, Sirius?" he asked, still smiling. Sirius gulped, and nodded. "All alone?"

"Yes, sir."

"Funny, I could have sworn I heard another voice. Perhaps your cloaked friend was the culprit," Dumbledore added.

James, hands trembling, pushed Sev's shoulders down until he was crouching by James' knees. Then the other boy pulled his hood off.

"Sorry, Headmaster, sir," James mumbled.

"Sorry? Whatever for?" Dumbledore asked, in a tone of voice which made it clear he knew perfectly well what for.

"Sorry for stampeding the Hufflepuffs, sir," Sirius and James said in unison. Dumbledore chuckled.

"Much though I like to see inter-house co-operation, lads, I think you should stick to less life-threatening pursuits. Someone could have been hurt. What if one of them had tried to jump out a window?"

"With all due respect, sir, Hufflepuff common room is underground," James answered stoutly.

"Exactly my point," Dumbledore said with a grin. "And you two were the only...conspirators, in this?"

"Sir?" Sirius asked.

"Remus Lupin was not, perhaps, an abetter? He didn't teach you that moat? A tricky bit of business, that."

"Remus wouldn't do something like that," James answered.

"No, perhaps not. What about your shadow, little Peter?"

Sirius grinned. "We wouldn't let Peter do something like that."

Dumbledore nodded. "And young Severus Snape? This was not masterminded by him?"

"He wasn't -- " "He didn't -- "

"Severus," said Dumbledore, in a voice which brooked no disobedience. Sev ducked out from under the cloak, and stood between the others, face burning.

"It wasn't his -- " James began, but Dumbledore silenced him with a wave of his hand.

"Professor Kiernan has already informed me of your punishment for being...shall we say, duped, by a few young Slytherins," Dumbledore said gently. "If you were not already being punished, I should have punished you for this, perhaps. But I think this is a case of the crime coming second, don't you?"

"Sir?" Sev asked, confused.

"I am going to pretend that I saw none of you in this corridor tonight," Dumbledore continued. "However, young master Potter," he added, lifting the cloak off of James' shoulders by the collar, "I think I shall confiscate this for the remainder of the year. Until you have learned to be subtle without it."

James watched Dumbledore store the cloak with a depressed look.

"What about me?"

James and Sev turned to look at Sirius, who'd spoken a little more loudly than necessary. Dumbledore also turned. "You're punishing Sev and James. What about me?" he asked.

"Do you wish to be punished?"

"It's not fair, me getting off if they're not," Sirius answered.

"Spoken like a true friend," Dumbledore said, with a hint of approval. "And what do you think your punishment ought to be, Sirius?"

Sirius blinked. "You want me to invent my own?" he asked. Dumbledore nodded. Sirius considered matters.

"I think you ought to make me stay here the whole Christmas break, and do extra work," Sirius said finally. Dumbledore inclined his head.

"An interesting idea," he answered. "How are your parents, Sirius?"

Sev had never seen Sirius turn quite that shade of red before. "Fine," he muttered.

"Glad to hear it," said Dumbledore. "I take my leave of you, gentlemen -- or would, if I had seen you here at all," he added, gliding serenely away. There was a moment's hushed silence.

"Blimey, let's get out of here before he comes to his senses!" James said, and they raced for the safety of their common rooms.

***

Detentions with Kiernan were an interesting experience.

He had the unnerving habit of referring to people as if they were merely the latest pups out of some canine breeding line; Severus was, of course, 'Snape-Brennan', and he learned a good deal about both families in a short amount of time. Kiernan would take him to the library and set him to copying out books that couldn't be removed, or sometimes he would have him clean the History of Magic classroom by hand, while Kiernan practiced his next-day's lecture. Sev hated this; not only did he come to realise that his fellow students were slobs, but he was forced to sit through some History of Magic lectures twice. Sometimes, after learning what Sev was doing, James or Sirius would purposefully leave behind slips of parchment with jokes or outrageous insults on them. Remus would scrawl notes of encouragement on his desk for Sev to clean off (thus shortening the amount of time he had to spend scraping Ever-Sticking Chewing Gum off the far desks). Lily Evans sometimes left him a butterscotch candy, and Liam, a third-year Gryffindor, liked to slip horrible caricatures of Kiernan into the cracks in his bench, for Sev to find. Some of the Ravenclaws, probably under Sirius' influence, would leave magic self-cleaning spells written on the undersides of their desks, so that when he got there all he had to do was touch the spell and that particular desk would clean itself.

Still, it was hard going. Sometimes the Slytherin students would leave things especially messy on purpose -- they were the ones who kept leaving the gum on the far desks. And Kiernan made him nervous, with his talk of Muggle 'eugenics' and good wizardly breeding, and his inquiries into the sort of girl Severus thought would be good to marry. Severus was eleven. He thought girls had cooties (except for Thorpe, and maybe Lily, and a couple of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team were nice enough).

"What'd old Pureblood-Prat make you do this time?" James asked, as Sev walked into the library, sweaty from cleaning and not at all in the mood to joke around.

"Goblin rebellions," he said tiredly. "I don't see why I even have to /go/ to class on Thursdays anymore, I always know the lecture ahead of time anyway."

"Is that why you take all your notes in code?" Remus asked, looking up from a book on Potent Potions: Drinks For Those Who Dare.

"Code?" James asked. "You take /notes/ in /code/? I knew you were bright, Sev, but don't you think that's going a bit far?"

"My notes aren't in code," Sev said, looking curiously at Remus.

"Sure they are. I sit behind you, don't I? Every Thursday you sit there, looking like you're hardly listening, and then you write all these weird runes and stuff. They are runes, aren't they? Wish you'd teach me, we're not allowed to take Runic studies until third year," Remus added.

"Quick, move over a bit," James said, shoving Sirius and Sev so that they sat shoulder-to-shoulder. "Peter's around and I'm sick of him wanting my class notes."

"Why don't you just tell him so, instead of sneaking about and playing hide-go-seek with him?" Remus asked, not looking up from his text this time.

"Because the game's more fun," James replied. "All right, I think he's gone," he added. Severus was just as glad for a change in subject; he had a suspicion about Remus' observations, and didn't want to discuss them.

"So now what /I/ want to know," Sirius said, leaning forward, "Is how we're going to carry out part four of the Great Expedition without the invisibility cloak. Slytherins are brighter than Hufflepuff, by and large -- oh, don't snort at me, Lupin, you know it's true."

"Do you think we ought to try it at all?" Sev asked. "The three of us are already in enough trouble as it is."

"That's why we bring Lupin along. We get caught, we make him take the blame," Sirius said, shooting a grin at the brown-haired boy. Remus smiled, gently, and closed his book.

"Of course you have to do it," he said. "What's the point of having gotten in trouble over the last one if you don't finish the job?"

James looked at him in surprise. "You're for this?"

"I was always for them. I let Severus into Gryffindor, didn't I? I just didn't want to be a part of Hufflepuff's," he added. He gave Sev a slightly strained look, and Sev knew he still hadn't paid Lupin back in full for having blackmailed him earlier.

"All four of us are in, then?" James asked. The other three nodded. "The Great Slytherin Expedition is in planning," he announced. "So, brains, you have any idea how to flush out the Slytherins, get in without being seen, and get back out too, without an invisibility cloak?"

"There's potions and that," Remus said thoughtfully. "We could disguise ourselves as Slytherins."

"No thanks," James made a face. "Other ideas?"

"Blackmail," Sirius suggested. "Frame that tit Tertius for something and blackmail him into letting us in."

"Tertius'd get you back, sooner or later. He's really ugly about that kind of thing," Sev reminded them.

"He's just plain really ugly," James grinned.

"What about over break? You're both staying, aren't you?" Remus asked. Sev and Sirius both turned red.

"Either that or go back to my parents. Grandfather's gone to Ireland on business, all holiday," Sev muttered.

"Wouldn't go home even if I could," Sirius added, a little more loudly than he had to. "Dumbledore just gave me a good excuse to give my parents."

"It's not really fair, anyhow," James said. "I mean, breaking into a common room over holiday, that's just cowardly."

"Half the thrill is doing it when we might get caught," Sirius agreed. Sev was still staring at his hands, embarrassed that he didn't have a place to go for the holidays, other than a Squib home where he wasn't really wanted anyhow. Grandfather Carver had been gruffly apologetic, but insisted that his business trip to Ireland was not the sort where you brought a youngster along.

"Maybe Dumbledore'll see how responsible you've been since you got caught, and give the cloak back early," Remus said consolingly.

"Maybe Professor McGonagall will sprout wings," James muttered. "We ought to wait till next term, though. Catch 'em off guard. Reckon Kiernan'll rethink your detentions?"

"Doubt it," Sev replied. "I'm too useful to him."

"Kiernan's head of Slytherin, isn't he?" Remus asked, still studying his textbook. The other three regarded him with interest.

"Ye-es," Sev said slowly.

"What's going on in that deviant mind of yours, Lupin?" James asked. Remus, still looking down, smiled.

"Give me a week or two to think about it," he said.

"Bluffer," James shot back.

"Let him have the time," Sev put in. James glanced at him.

"You think goody-two-shoes Lupin can come up with something Sirius and I couldn't?" he demanded.

"There's a lot about Remus you don't know."

"Oh yeah?" James challenged, as Remus' head turned sharply, and he fixed keen and somewhat desperate eyes on Sev. "Like what?"

Sev stared back at Remus. "I'll never tell," he said with a grin. The look of relief on Remus' face told him his message had been received, loud and clear. No matter what you do, Lupin, your secret's safe with me.

/Ta, Sev./

Sirius and James put their heads together, then, and began trying to guess what it was Remus was thinking of. Sev sat back, and watched the other three boys with mild interest. James' unruly black hair, sticking out at odd angles, and Sirius' rather more shaggy, but still close enough that they could be twins if seen in poor light; Remus with his neat, perfectly-polished appearance and hair that fell more low than was really flattering, to hide the slight point on his ears. And he, Sev Snape, bespectacled eyes perpetually wide at each new spell or potion learned, hair getting straighter as he grew it out to shoulder-length, to keep it from tangling up in a curly mess, the tan fading as he spent more and more time studying or working in class...

An unlikely quartet, two troublemakers and an aspiring Prefect and Sev, who was sarcastic and shy and masterminded the schemes that James and Sirius took such delight in carrying out. A boy who was never, ever going to take magic for granted.

Sev wasn't sure why he suddenly felt like the world could get no better, but he enjoyed it while it lasted.

***

"I've done it," Remus said, shaking snow from his boots.

It was barely three days before end of term. James and Sirius were playing a mutant form of stickball in the snow, involving a stolen Bludger and bat, with the goal being to hit a certain unoccupied stone turret on the castle and not die when it rebounded. Sev, who had spent rather more time studying than the others, was sitting on a stone wall, under an overhang, with a book. He knew he was more clever than Sirius and a good deal more sensible than James, but he had a hard time memorising. Things didn't seem to want to stick.

"Have you now?" he asked, closing his book and turning a tired-eyed face to Remus, who stood trembling with excitement on the flagstones. Behind them, Sirius ducked the Bludger, which went three inches into the ground on impact. "Who's the girl?"

Remus brushed it off with a wave of his hand. "I've figured out how we're going to break into Slytherin next term," he said, throwing himself down on a bench below Sev's perch.

"Wonderful. You'll have to smuggle me back onto the grounds, because I'm going to be expelled for criminally low exams -- "

"You need a hug," Remus said critically.

"Try it and I'll hurt you," Sev replied.

"Don't you want to hear my brilliant plan? Before we share it with the Hooligans?" Remus asked. Sev glanced out at James, who was taking his turn with the Bludger bat, unaware that Sirius was about to pelt him with an enormous snowball.

"Tell me," he said, taking a sip from Sirius' everlasting cocoa jar, and offering some to Remus.

"Well, I thought about it, and I thought, you know, there's nothing to stop us wearing some really heavy cloaks and just walking into the common room when a bunch of Slytherins do," Remus said.

"You have balls the size of Quaffles," Sev replied with a yawn. James, having ducked the bludger and snowball simultaneously, was laughing as it chased the bat-less Sirius, yelping, across the white fields.

"Think about it. How many times do you actually look at everyone who walks into the Ravenclaw common room with you after class? And they're not expecting anyone to just /walk/ in."

"How do we get pictures?" Sev asked, interested despite his better judgement.

"That's the best part. We're going to do it on a Wednesday, so that when the Slytherins try to tell on us after we throw off our hoods and snap a picture, Kiernan will know they're lying, cos you'll have been with him the whole time," Remus said proudly. "And we'll have been seen too, because we're going to come by to drop off some books for you."

Sev scowled.

"How exactly are we supposed to be in two places at the same time?" he asked. Remus held up a small vial, with a grin.

"This," he said reverently, "Is extract of phoenix skin. You know phoenixes can -- "

"Phoenikoi," Sev corrected.

"What?" Remus asked, blinking.

"The plural of phoenix is phoenikoi," Sev repeated. "It's Greek."

"You've spent way too much time studying, my cranky friend," Remus sighed. "So tell me, Professor Snape, what does the extract of phoenix skin do?"

"Allows Disapparation in non-Disapparating areas; prevents splinching in normal Apparation; in potions, allows the exact division of liquid into two cauldrons, giving a precision not possible using simple measuring tools," Sev replied promptly, without thinking. "When used in a polyjuice-type potion, it allows individuals to create...doubles...of themselves..." he trailed off and looked up at Remus, admiringly. "That's really /sneaky/," he said. "How'd you come by it?"

"Never you mind that," Remus answered. "Sometimes a good boy can get away with things a troublemaker never could." He tossed the vial to Sev, who caught it and studied it.

"And you are going to make the potion, Professor," Remus continued. "You're the best of us at it. James always lets his boil over and I'm allergic to things that might explode all over me and Sirius..."

"...is hopeless," Sev nodded.

"In Potions, anyhow," Remus agreed. "You know how to use this?"

"I think so," Sev replied. "I'll get it started over break."

Behind them, James stuffed Sirius' mouth full of snow, and Sirius knocked him flat. Remus and Sev exchanged a look of mild despair.