Blood & Brothers

Blood and Brothers, Chapter One

By Japetha Razorwire

Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Philosophers/Sorcerers Stone, HP and the Chamber of Secrets, HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and HP and the Goblet of Fire.

Rating: PG-13 for language (if you don´t believe that eleven year old boys can swear pretty badly, you didn´t grow up on Earth.)

Disclaimers: I do not own the Harry Potter Universe. Nor do I own Snape, Hagrid, Lucius Malfoy, McGonagall, Lupin, Pettigrew, Potter, Black, Dumbledore, or anyone or thing else you recognize from the Harry Potter Universe. That all belongs to J. K. Rowling. I do own, however, Nemy, Sine, Nick, Ageodd, and what you do not recognize from J. K. Rowling´s books. Should you have trouble figuring out which is mine and which is not, go look in the Harry Potter Lexicon. I am doing this for fun, and not for any monetary gain (or any other kind of gain except personal experience at writing fanfic/snapefic.)

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"Whoa! Is that your father´s old wand?"

Severus Snape blinked at the hyper hazel-eyed boy who had suddenly stopped chattering to his friend in their car of the Hogwarts Express and now sprawled forward across the table, one finger poised to touch the wand Severus had been absently toying with as he chased away the vague fears his first ride on the Hogwarts Express brought upon him. Jarred out of his thoughts, Severus scowled at the other and pulled his wand back. "No," he said. "Why would I have a hand-me-down wand?"

"I dunno, but that wand looks ancient! How long have you had it?"

"Five years," Severus said. Ancient? The handle was a bit shiny with use, but the wand wasn´t that old.

"Five years?" the other boy exclaimed. "How old are you? I´m a first year--I´m eleven!"

"I´m eleven, too. I got it when I was six."

"I want your parents," the hazel-eyed boy told him as the other just stared. "I couldn´t even touch anyone´s wand in my house for forever, and I just only got my own yesterday! See?" He pulled his out. "Ten inches, white pine, with a dragon heartstring." He held it out for Severus to examine.

Severus looked, but didn´t touch. The wand was very pale compared to his own. He brought his out of his lap and held it up to the others. It was black and exceeded the pine wand by a palm length. "Thirteen inches, ebony, with a Pegasus feather core," he rather proudly informed them. "It´s from Greece, where my grandparents on my mum´s side are from."

"Brilliant!" the hazel-eyed boy exclaimed.

The other boy searched in his sleeve for his wand, eager to compare. He set it on the table, so the three were parallel to each other. "Willow, thirteen, core of snake-essence...or fang...or something. It works, at least!" he added when both Severus and his buddy gave him a look. How could you not know what your own wand was made from? "Anyway--I´m Sine Caper. He´s Nemy--Nemorath, actually--Markson."

"Severus Snape," Severus said, feeling a bit more outgoing in the face of both the other boys´ infectious excitement.

There was silence as they all regarded each other. Severus saw two boys, both shorter than he. Nemy had sharper features than Sine, but Sine´s hair was a color of white blond that looked more white than blond. Both of them were of medium body-build--nothing really spectacular. In turn, they looked back at him, seeing a skinny boy with black eyes, a rather large nose, and short, straight, black hair that fluffed forward over his forehead at the top as if it wasn´t heavy enough to lie flat. All three of them were already dressed in normal black Hogwarts robes, even if Sine´s looked a bit worn.

"Wow," Sine suddenly said. "I mean...wow! We´re really going to Hogwarts, aren´t we?" Sine murmured, putting his wand away and climbing over Nemy to sit in a window seat.

Nemy rolled his eyes at Severus, and Severus let himself smile a little in return. "Sine´s a moron--but his birthday was six days ago, so he´s nearly a year younger than I."

"I´m not a little kid! I´m still eleven, same as you!"

"Honestly Sine! `Wow´?"´

"What else should I say?" Sine demanded, turning from the window to glare.

"You could say `Daaaaaamn´," Severus suggested helpfully, remembering what his father had always said when surprised.

Sine and Nemy shushed him, closed the door of their compartment, and dissolved into giggles.

"What?"

"I can´t believe you said that, Sev!" Nemy exclaimed.

"Don´t call me Sev; I´m Severus," Severus corrected. What was wrong with "Daaaaaamn" anyway? His father said it all the time.

"Daaaaaamn, Severus!" Sine said, giggling madly.

"Moron! You sound like you fancy him, you poof!" Nemy hissed at Sine, poking him in the side with his wand. "Anyway, Severus says it cooler. You just sound dumb."

"Do not!" Sine cried. "Take that back, you..." he stopped. "You..."

"Bitch-wad?" Severus asked, because he knew "bitch" was a cuss word and he wanted to see their reactions again.

"BITCH-WAD!" Sine yelled, then fell over laughing as Nemy hysterically pointed to the candy lady through the window in their door, whose sensitive ears had obviously heard something.

"Shut up! Shut up!" Nemy hissed. "We´re gonna get in trouble! Expelled before we ever get in! Something!"

As the two boys frantically tried to steer their minds onto the proper track as the candy lady stopped before their door, Severus calmly picked up the book he´d been reading before Nemy had interrupted him about his wand and did his best not to look guilty of starting all the cursing.

"Do you gentlemen want some candy?" she asked suspiciously, holding up a pack of Witch Wad Wicked Bubble Gum. "Sixty knuts a pack."

Severus dug into the pocket of his robe, finding stray knuts and quickly counting them out and grabbing the pack. "They asked about my favorite candy and misheard me," Severus explained to her, mouth twitching as the other two started to snicker, Nemy behind his hands and Sine into his wizard´s hat.

"I see. Anything else?"

"No ma´am," Severus told her politely--which started a new round of giggles from Nemy and Sine.

"Well...just call if you want anything else."

"I will."

The three watched as she left, and then exploded into laughter--Severus included. He never was able to act like this at home!

"That was great, Severus."

Severus smiled, suddenly happy to be the center of attention.

* * * *

"Hell on a hockey stick!"

"What´s a hockey stick?" Sine muttered around a mouthful of chocolate frog.

"What´s hell?" Nemy asked.

The train stopped. Severus peered out the window, curious to get his first glimpse of his new home. Well, home for most of the year. He waved their comments away, distracted by the view of the terminus-station and a large old castle looming beyond a vast inky lake. "Never mind." Apparently they didn´t understand that curse, and he didn´t feel like explaining--even if he wondered how Nemy could not know what "hell" meant. Hockey sticks, yes...those were Muggle instruments of violence or something. But hell?

"Are we there yet?" Sine asked, twisting in his seat and scattering Chocolate Frog cards onto the floor to look out of the window.

"We´re here." Severus made sure his wand was securely into his sleeve and that his book was packed into the small bag he´d brought onto the train. Suddenly, he felt apprehensive. With Nemy and Sine, who were so friendly to him and appreciative of his jokes and repertoire of curses--both verbal and magical, as he´d demonstrated on Sine when they´d gotten into a brief spat over something Severus couldn´t even remember now--it had been easy to forget that Hogwarts would be something totally new and different to him. A real school--not the lone tutor who for some reason never showed for lessons when his parents were away on business. Children his age, not cousins nearly as old as his father, with the same no-nonsense attitude and inability to think of him as a child who still had yet to learn instead of a small adult who was stupid. He wondered what everyone would be like--would they hate him because he was a full-blooded wizard from a long line of full-blooded wizards like his father told him, or love his intelligence like his mother said they would? Or something else? He certainly hadn´t expected Nemy and Sine to act the way that they had.

Well, whatever happened, he supposed he had to face it.

"Wait up!" Nemy exclaimed, and quickly cleaned up candy wrappers and shoved them in the trash bin. "We three can stick together."

Severus, being a loner by nature even though he´d been outgoing this morning with the boys, hesitated. "Stick together?" he asked. "You mean tag along?" He thought of the way his cousins had always disliked his own attempts to tag along--wasn´t it rude to ask that or something?

He saw the boys exchange looks. "Well if your highness deigns to let us," Sine said, rather meanly.

Severus blinked, wondering why the person who´d been so nice before suddenly had venom in his words. He watched, dumbfounded, as Nemy seized Sine´s sleeve and barged out of their compartment while giving Severus a look. Confused, he stood in the hallway of the train, until he heard someone come up behind him.

"Ouch. Well, you can´t expect much more than that from a Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, now can you?" A voice said behind him in a regretful tone. Severus turned, and was surprised to see a teenage boy standing there, his pale gray eyes a little sad. "Unfortunately, you´ll have to put up with them for the ride across the lake, but then you´ll be seated with your rightful House."

"I´m already Sorted?" Severus asked the teen in confusion. He thought he´d heard somewhere you had to put a lousy old hat or something on.

"Well, no, but I can see from the looks of you you´ll probably be Ravenclaw--or Slytherin." Somehow he made "Slytherin" sound like the best House in the world, without actually saying words to that effect. "I´m Lucius Malfoy, by the way. I take it you´re a Snape?"

"Yeah. Severus. How´d you know?"

"Your eyes. And the nose." Lucius´ mouth quirked. "I´ve met a few of your cousins, I think. I didn´t realize there was one young enough to be in Hogwarts, still."

"Oh."

"C´mon...get moving. Hagrid is gathering the first years by the lake, and if you´re late you´ll have to swim across," Lucius said, grinning at him.

Severus suddenly wished he could talk to Lucius--even if he was old and looked like to be at least a sixth-year--but Lucius would have none of it, pushing Severus firmly forward out of the train.

Quickly Severus found himself moving with a small herd of first years towards a giant of a man who howled in a booming voice for them all to come over and get into the boats. A few boys jostled him as they passed, testing him to see if he´d be good to tease, but he scowled at them and they quickly moved away. He wondered if his scowl was truly that frightening.

Severus was herded into a small, frightfully rocking boat along with three other students, neither of them Nemy or Sine--which he was glad. He was getting angry now that they gave him the cold shoulder when he didn´t even have any idea what he´d done to make them mad at him. Two of the students were girls, who alternated between giggling excitedly and staring at Severus, the other boy in their boat, and each other. Sighing, he settled himself into the boat, opened his small bag, and pulled out the book he´d been reading much earlier and had never gotten the chance to go back to.

"You´re reading a book right now?" the boy exclaimed in shock.

Severus blinked at him for a second, shrugged, and went back to reading. Truthfully, he wasn´t fond of deep water. He didn´t know why--he just wasn´t. Reading distracted him, and the journey across the lake wouldn´t be long enough for motion sickness to move in on him as it always did when he read on a boat.

So while the other First Years oohed and aahed over the enchanted boats and a swarm of pretty fish that swam under them, Severus was off learning about divination. Well, as best as he could; he didn´t really like divination, but since it was one of the few kinds of magic he´d never really read up on he had decided a few days ago he should at least try to get through one book on divination.

Suddenly, there was a scream, as a giant squid surged out of the water and leapt over the procession of boats--even Severus saw it, the thing too big to go unnoticed. "Daaaaaamn," he whispered, forgetting he already had used that curse today. The other three children didn´t even notice he´d sworn--they were all watching as the creature soared through the air, tentacles flying, and crashed back into the lake on the right side of the boats with a tremendous splash.

"Whoa! Did you see that? Did you?" the other boy in their boat cried, seizing Severus´s arm and shaking him in his excitement.

"Get off me!" Severus snapped in annoyance. "No, I didn´t see it. What are you talking about?" He kept his face deadpan as the other boy began describing it, then got extremely irritated as it became apparent the boy had believed him when he´d said he´d not seen it.

"It was huge! I mean, whopping big! It--"

"Shut up. I saw it."

"But you said..."

"Joke! Joke! Can´t you see a joke when it hits you on that freckled nose of yours?"

"Well you don´t have to be so mean about it!"

"I´m not! You´re getting annoying, that´s all," Severus said rationally.

"I´m not annoying!" the boy argued, face twisting into anger.

Once again, Severus sat there, wondering what he had said to get the boy angry. Glancing at the two girls out of the corner of his eye, he saw that they were giving him disapproving looks as well, meaning that they understood where he´d gone wrong.

"Morons," he muttered to himself, dropping the argument and sticking his nose back into his book, ignoring how the boy sputtered and the girls looked on with frowns.

Somehow, some way, during the short walk from the edge of the lake into the entrance hall of Hogwarts, Severus managed to alienate another fellow first year. He never got the boy´s name, but had a sudden urge--which he ignored--to cringe as the boy´s brown eyes glared hexes into his back. How many kids hated him now? He tried his best--but somehow something his sharp black eyes couldn´t see and his mind didn´t understand snapped up suddenly and ruined what might have burgeoned into a firm friendship. Unhappily, his mind searched for reasons. I´m a Snape, a wizard from a long line of wizards. I´m too tall. I look funny. They´re stupid. They´re jealous, of my intelligence, of my family, of everything. I did something wrong. The last his mind hurriedly skipped over. How could he possibly be doing something wrong? He´d learned long ago from his parents what his faults were, and had long since remedied them. No, he wasn´t doing anything wrong. Therefore it had to be them. They think its funny to pretend to be friends, then suddenly turn on you. Well, in a way it was funny--his own fault if he couldn´t see right through them like he could "see through glass", as his father said. Well, he´d learn. He´d learn to see everything, no matter how they hid it.

Letting out a growling sigh to himself, he turned his head slightly to the side, just enough to glimpse the recipient of his last failed attempt at friendship still glaring at him with his angry brown eyes. "How do I look?" the boy had asked him as they had walked up the stairs into the hall. "Besides the water spots," he quickly added. Snape had regarded him for a long moment, and answered truthfully, "Your hair looks like a pile of sticks." "What?!" "Well, it does. What´s wrong? My hair looks like hell too." But it hadn´t--before sending him off on the train, his parents had taken meticulous care to make sure the hair potion to make his hair lie flat and smooth actually worked today, if it never did again. For some reason, the kid had taken his remark--which had been in response to a direct question--badly. Well, it wasn´t his fault. Which must mean its that kid´s, his thoughts chattered at him. But...wasn´t he the one always at fault?

At home it was always Severus´s fault. And yet...if it had to do with an outsider, it was always the outsider´s fault, not the family´s. Confronted with conflicting ideas on himself, his family, and others, Severus chewed it all over as they walked into the Great Hall and began the sorting ceremony. His mind used it as an excuse to try to ignore the great mass of people he was suddenly exposed to. How could there be so many people?

"Lamine, Ana." The woman who called out the names to summon First Years to the sorting hat looked a bit nervous. Looking up to stare at the other teachers, who were all sitting at one table apart from the students, Severus noted that, even if she looked as severe as someone twice her age, she was the youngest professor he could see.

"Ravenclaw!"

Suddenly interested in people watching--his mind liked to pay attention to the oddest things sometimes, it seemed--Severus left his chain of thought about himself, his family, and others (and his social status), dangling in favor of this new experience.

"Lotten, Richard." In response to this name, a skinny runt of a kid with light brown hair got up and sat on the stool.

"Ravenclaw!" The Ravenclaw table cheered, and Richard joined them.

"Nickleback, Nick." This was a blond kid, who seemed extremely shy.

"Slytherin!"

"Osprey, Grinna." A girl with chocolate-colored skin and hair.

"Slytherin!"

"Pettigrew, Peter!" A round sort of boy went up.

"Gryffindor!"

"Potter, James." The boy who´d been glaring at him for the past five minutes.

"Gryffindor!"

"Ristok, Arramy!" A kid shorter than "Lupin, Remus" had been.

"Hufflepuff!"

"Snape, Severus." Severus blinked. His name. What? Oh, he had to be sorted. Quietly he walked up to the stool, and sat as a very old hat--geezer old, if a hat could be a geezer--was placed on his head. Being adult size, it fell to end somewhere around his nose.

"Hmmmm." The sound was in his head, the sort of thing an old man--geezer--would make when trying to sound sage and wise.

"I´m a geezer, am I?" The hat chuckled his mind. "I´m long past geezer, Severus Snape. So, what House do you want to be in?" There was a moment of silence, and Severus sensed the thing was somehow looking deep within him, and his thoughts, his memories, and his soul. He didn´t like the feeling--those were things no one but his self was supposed to know!

"Get off," he suddenly hissed at the hat.

"I can´t do that until I´ve Sorted you, lad."

"Then Sort me!" Get out of my mind.

"Fine then. Go join that Nickleback child in...SLYTHERIN!"

The Slytherin table burst into cheers, as it had for every other child Sorted into Slytherin, and the hat was, thankfully, removed from his head. Unfortunately, the hat had made the tidying potion that had been applied to his hair earlier today fail, and his fine hair fluffed out over his forehead in a small thatch. Some students giggled as he neared the Slytherin table, motioning for him to smooth his hair down, but even as his hand automatically went up to smooth it down, he knew it would be no use.

Lucius, too, was cheering, along with the rest of the Slytherin. Severus met his pale gray eyes briefly, than sat down next to the shy Nickleback kid.

Fin Chapter One

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A/N: Thank you to Dragonlady and Rebecca for betaing this first draft for me! Both of you had excellent comments, and were a good "audience", proving that the funny bits I stuck in really are somewhat funny. ;) Also, Ruth and Rhianna did the second round of betaing. Thank you both! Sorry for taking so long getting this up; it´s been sitting on my harddrive for forever.