Into the Mouth of Hell

Into the Mouth of Hell: Chapter 1

Hemlock Tealeaves

For as long as he could remember, Severus Snape thought he was a perfectly normal wizard boy. He lived in a perfectly normal wizard house with three towers, eight staircases, and a large garden full of plants like belladonna and monkshood. He had perfectly normal wizard parents, who made potions to cure fevers, gave him ten knuts in pocket money a week, and also sometimes let him stay up late to listen to the "Witching Hour" on the Wireless Wizard Network. All in all, he lived a perfectly normal life. For a wizard.

Severus' father worked at the Ministry of Magic in London, where he was employed in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. He often went on long trips to visit important wizards all over the world and talk about dragon imports, dueling bans, and other dangerous things. At least, that's what Severus always imagined, because his father, Desolas, never talked about his work when he was home, which wasn't very often. Instead, Severus spent his time with his mother, learning all about the magical world, and also about very boring things like reading, penmanship, weights and measures, and how to balance a teaspoon just on the edge of a saucer.

In the mornings, Severus rose and had breakfast with his mother in the dining room at eight o'clock. Every morning, she handed him a list of essay questions for him to research in the library. After breakfast, he padded down the stone hall, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Severus' small desk was in the middle of the library and faced his father's much larger desk, but he preferred to read on the floor in front of the fire (Severus was usually cold, even in the summer) or curl up on the faded red velvet cushions in the window seats. Around noon, a house-elf would bring in a tray with his lunch. Sometimes, if Severus was lucky and he finished his essays by teatime, his mother would let him have the remainder of the afternoon off to wander the grounds. Most times, however, she sent him to the garden or back to the library. Severus was sure that since he learned to read he had spent more time with books than with people. But that was about to change.

One afternoon in May, shortly after Severus' eleventh birthday, two strange post owls came through the open drawing room window and landed on the table. His mother, Astria, looked slightly annoyed, but continued to stir her tea, to which she added a few snips of hemlock bark to help with the headaches she always seemed to have. One of the owls, a tawny one, hooted softly as to alert them to its presence. Astria sighed, set her spoon down, and slowly pulled the letters off the owls' outstretched legs, handing them to Severus.

"Tell me who they're from, darling, my head is addling me," she said tiredly.

Severus took the letters. They were both very heavy; one had emerald-green ink on yellowish parchment, the other was written in black ink on the deepest red parchment he had ever seen, much like the center of a red rose. "They're both addressed to me!" Severus beamed, for he rarely got mail.

"Well, yes, darling, I'm not blind. Look at the seals on the back, boy, and see who they are from." She emphasized the last word as if Severus was, in fact, a complete idiot. His smile slipped off his face.

"Yes mother," he replied, turning the envelopes over. On the back of the envelope with the green writing was a purple wax seal divided into fourths, bearing a crest with a badger, a raven, a lion, and a snake. A big, curvy 'H' was in the middle. "I think this is from Hogwarts, mother." Severus showed the letter to his mother, who looked at it down her very long nose.

"Very well, then. And the other?"

Severus turned the other envelope around. In a silvery-black wax, a large, solid 'D' was stamped on the left of the seal, and after it in smaller script letters was the rest of the name: Durmstrang. "This is from the Durmstrang Institute," Severus said curiously. "But why are they sending it to me?"

"What? Durmstrang?" She suddenly seemed very alert. "Give that to me!"

She ripped the letter out of Severus' small hands, tore it open viciously, then quickly unfolded the red parchment within and scanned it, her lips moving slightly. She got to the end of the page and looked up fearfully at Severus. "This is a mistake. Do not tell your father about this, do you understand?"

Severus nodded. "But -- "

"Do not ask questions, Severus. You are going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and nowhere else. Do -- you -- under -- stand?" Her tone was very final.

Severus lowered his eyes. "Yes, mother," he said to his teacup. He followed the pattern with his eyes: serpents winding around lime trees. Hand painted, his mother often boasted, in black, green, and brown with the Snape family crest.

"Excellent." His mother's voice sounded tired again. "Now read your Hogwarts letter aloud, dear, let's see if you can manage that." She folded her long fingers around her teacup and listened as Severus read his letter. When he had finished, she smiled a very small smile. They finished their tea in silence.

When her tea was nearly gone, Severus' mother swirled the dregs three times with her left hand, turned the cup upside down, and then, when the rest of the tea had drained to the saucer, she turned the cup slowly counterclockwise, tutting quietly under her breath.

Severus sat quietly with his hands in his lap, still clutching the Hogwarts letter, waiting for his mother to finish. Finally she set the cup back down in the ring of liquid in her saucer. "Nothing worthwhile," she sighed. "What's in yours, darling?"

Severus followed his mother's example grudgingly. He hated reading tealeaves. He thought it utterly pointless, and he could barely make out any signs in the shapeless brown clots in the bottom of his cup. But he turned it counterclockwise anyway, and tried to see if there was anything there. "Well, I think there might be a cross," Severus said, squinting, "and maybe a bird?"

He could feel his mother's hard stare, but kept turning his cup. "Well, is there or isn't there?" she asked tersely. "And if you decide that there is, what does it mean?"

Severus was quite used to this by now. His mother turned as many ordinary daily events into lessons as possible, hopeful, she said, of having a son who wasn't as daft as he was dull. "Well," Severus began, taking a breath that was considerably deeper than it needed to be, "the cross is a sign of trouble, and, er, trials. Suffering, I believe." He paused, waiting for his mother's contradiction. "And the bird," he paused again, racking his brain, looking into his slowly turning cup, as if the answer would fly out at him, "means that I will be sorted into Ravenclaw."

He knew immediately that this was the wrong answer. His mother let out a short, derisive laugh. "If you want to shame us, boy, you are on a fine track. Now, think, darling, what does a bird mean? Could it be a falcon?"

Severus kept turning his cup. A falcon? he thought. That sounds familiar. He narrowed his eyes. The pictures in the book his mother had assigned were coming back to him. A bird, a falcon... "A falcon, the mortal enemy," he said definitively. He chanced a glance at his mother, hoping that he had not failed again.

Judging by the smile on her face, he had gotten it right. "Very good, Severus," she said sweetly, running her hands down both sides of his face, pushing his black hair into his eyes. "You did very well."

Severus put the cup down finally. "May I be excused to the library?" he asked, eager to find a leather-bound tome he had glimpsed earlier in the week. "I'd like to research the school I am to attend."

"And what school is that?"

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, mother," Severus replied evenly.

"The only school you were invited to attend?" Astria's eyes narrowed slightly as she surveyed her son.

"Yes, mother, the only school which I was invited to attend."

Astria smiled sweetly. "You'll find Hogwarts, A History on the third case on the east wall, fifth shelf down."

"Thank you, mother," Severus said, rising.

Severus' favorite place in all of Snape Hall was the library. He spent a lot of time there looking up the answers to questions his mother gave him at breakfast every morning. He liked the smell of books and the feeling of being surrounded by them. Something about being enclosed in a room of words without his mother made him feel secure. He liked the history books best, but had even enjoyed some of the volumes of poetry, though he wondered if he understood any of it.

Once in the library, Severus closed the door behind him and let out a long breath. He was eleven now, and a "good-sized boy" the house-elf said, yet his mother still insisted on treating him like a child.

He scrutinized his reflection in the long windows along the west wall. He puffed out his chest a bit. Sure, he was a bit scrawny, but tall enough, nothing that a few cakes couldn't fix. Severus really liked cakes, but his mother refused to let him have sweets, saying that discipline was its own reward, and if he wanted cakes he should become a baker. And that had been the last time Severus had approached the matter.

He brushed his lanky black hair out of his face and tried to pat down the spot in the back where it stood slightly on end. He had been growing it out for over a year, hoping the added weight of length would pull down his cowlick. It seemed to be working, although he sometimes nicked a few drops of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion from his father's cabinet for good measure. Although Severus did not consider himself vain, he did think that his nose was very dignified, like his father's, and that his sharp black eyes made him look clever.

He turned from the windows and ran his long fingers along the edge of the fifth shelf. There was no dust; the house-elf was very good about that. The edge of the wood was worn to a gentle curve. Severus sometimes walked around the entire length of the library, feeling the curve of the shelves, the texture of the tapestry (more serpents and lime trees), and the smooth glass windows at arm's length. But today he stopped at the third case, pulling Hogwarts, A History off the shelf.

Severus was very excited to be going to school for two reasons: he'd finally be rid of his coddling mother, and there would be girls.

Severus grinned at the thought of all the girls that would be at Hogwarts, and then hid his silliness behind his hand out of habit. He figured there were worse things, after all, than being stuck at a school swarming with girls for ten months out of the year. And besides, he was smart: girls valued that. His parents had both gone to Hogwarts; his father was in Slytherin, his mother in Ravenclaw. And he could fly well enough to play Quidditch. Well, actually, he'd need a bit more practice. His mother let him out of the house generally in the afternoon to pick herbs in the garden, unless it was raining, but only his father would actually let him take one of the brooms out of the shed. And since his father was rarely home, his flying lessons had been few and far between.

"But other students will surely need guidance as well," Severus said to himself, as he flipped open the book and began to read. "I won't be that behind," he added reassuringly, watching the clouds move around the towers in the picture of Hogwarts Castle.

* * * * *

As September the first approached, Severus found himself in the library more and more often, either looking up herbs in one of countless lexicons on the subject, or simply curling up with a good history book in one of the many window seats. He figured it was mostly out of nerves that he kept making excuses to escape to the many wonderful books, for the first of September was sitting in the bottom of his stomach like a very heavy weight. Every time his mother brought up the subject, usually at breakfast and at afternoon tea when she could corner him for an hour, he felt his stomach grow heavier. He was sure by the end of the summer he would be so weighed down he would scarce be able to walk.

On the last afternoon of August, his mother told Severus some surprising news.

"Your father sent word this morning that he will be meeting us on Platform 9 ¾ to see you off to school." His mother said this in such a heavy way that Severus could not tell whether he should be glad or not.

"Oh, really?" he asked conversationally, putting down a jam sandwich, and mustering a look of complete befuddlement. "I thought he was away on business."

"Well," his mother sighed heavily, "turns out he is rather keen to introduce you to the children of one of his... associates."

Severus felt his eyebrow rise, and then quickly set to lowering it. "Well, it shall be fine to eet some of the other students." He finished his tea and set the cup upside down on the saucer.

"Yes, very well, dear," she continued somewhat distractedly. "You shall find your supplies for the school year have arrived and are already packed in your trunk. You will be allowed to select no more than five volumes from the family library to take with you."

"Only five?" Severus dared to challenge.

"I believe that you shall find the library at school to be most satisfactory for your studying needs. You will be allowed some leisure material, however, if you choose." His mother did not look at him, but instead was swirling her tea dregs.

Severus felt some of the indignation rush out of him as the excitement of an entirely new and unexplored library flooded his heart. "Is it a large library, mother?" Severus asked.

His mother turned her cup slowly, and opened her mouth as if to answer him, then inhaled sharply. Her black eyes widened, staring down into the cup.

It must be something good, Severus thought, leaning towards his mother, hoping to see what obscure form had suddenly distressed her.

She slowly put her right hand to her mouth and looked up at Severus.

Severus saw something on his mother's face that he had only seen there once before, and frankly, it scared him. Her face had gone quite pale, her eyes wide, and her eyebrows practically graced her dark hairline. It was panic.

She set down her own cup on the table, her hands shaking now. She reached out; her black eyes locked with her son's identically wide black eyes, and took his cup from his hands. She began to rotate the cup in an automatic fashion, taking very sharp breaths as she did so. Just as before, she suddenly gasped.

Severus watched with bated breath, rapt with apprehension. What had his mother seen?

Her eyes connected with her son, who was hanging on her every movement. "What is it?" he whispered.

She dropped the cup to the floor, where it shattered, and she reached out both shaking hands to her son's face.

"Promise me," she whispered, smoothing his hair into his face. "Promise me you'll do what's right. Promise me you won't be weak."

Severus did not know what to say or do. He just stared at his mother, who was now sobbing.

"Promise me!" she said, forcefully this time, shaking his head in her hands. "You must promise!"

"I p-p-promise," Severus stuttered. His mother's fingernails were pushing into his scalp. He felt for sure he was bleeding.

She looked at him pleadingly. Then she suddenly released him, pushing him back into his chair, as if holding him had hurt her.

Severus fell off his chair with the force of his mother's release. He scrambled to stand up; his mother buried her face in her hands. He did not ask to be excused, but hurried from the drawing room. Once in the hall, he broke into a run for the library.

* * * * *

Severus closed his eyes, leaned against the heavy library doors, and willed his heart to slow and his breath to steady. He had never been that terrified before, except when his parents had a huge row after his father began his job at the Ministry years ago. He opened his eyes slowly, watching the sun pour into the windows, the specks of dust sparkling. Whatever had scared his mother must have been pretty bad. There wasn't much that Severus thought could scare his mother.

Severus slowly pushed himself away from the doors. He knew what he had to do.

He walked over to the only dusty case in the library (his father forbade the house-elf to go near it). Severus read the ominous golden titles of some of the black books: The Darkest Art, All Magic Great and Powerful, and The Dueler's Guide to the Dark Arts. These were his father's books; these were the books Severus had never been allowed to read.

Severus slowly raised his shaking hand to the books. If he were caught, it would mean punishment. Taking a deep breath and summoning his courage, he blindly picked out five books and sat down in a window seat behind a green drape. He felt the leather covers warm in his hands.

He would not be weak. He would be prepared.

He opened the first book.