A Cloud Before the Moon

Prologue

For nearly five-hundred years, the Snape family had been part of one of the most profitable and renowned business establishments in history. In the late fifteenth century, Paracletus Snape had partnered with another ambitious adventurer, Algathor Black, to form Black & Snape's Emporium of Magic. Their success was immediate, and they soon had a number of Procurers in their employ, who traveled the globe in search of potion ingredients, rare wand filaments, magical creatures, and all manner of items necessary to practitioners of both light and dark magic.

During the late seventeenth century, Rabotham Snape had invited into the business a young French competitor who called himself Guillaume, le Marquis de Malfoi. Snape and his partner, Ozymandias Black, persuaded Guillaume to anglicize his name and they continued to expand their sphere of business as Black, Snape and Malfoy. Malfoy, in particular, saw to it that their fame and profits soared. He added to their inventory Muggles obtained by purchase or abduction, which they then sold to well-heeled wizards, no questions asked, at very steep prices. As William Malfoy explained, they were doing nothing that the Muggles were not already doing to themselves. When Ozymandias Black showed some reluctance to pursue an avenue of business so thoroughly illegal, he and his eldest son died of mysterious causes. His widow and younger son were shut out of the business, which carried on thereafter as Snape and Malfoy.

In the early twentieth century, the Ministry of Magic began making serious efforts to regulate the procurement and sale of magical items, creatures and artifacts, particularly those used in the Dark Arts. The costs and risks eventually became too steep to carry on the business. No doubt, many people would have considered the more limited trade in lawful items to be sufficiently profitable, but Snape and Malfoy were not accustomed to such limitations.

By the mid-1930s the partnership had dissolved, and the business liquidated. However, the shares were not evenly divided. Therebald Snape had dissipated most of his fortune on gambling, whores, and mind-altering potions. He had borrowed thousands of galleons from the business, and when the balance was reckoned, came away with a small fraction of it. At his death, he left his family nearly penniless, with a ruined reputation and no prospects. His son Balthazar was left to make his own fortune as best he could.

The situation for the Malfoy family was quite different. Therebald's former partner, and his son Darius, parlayed his very substantial share of the business into a number of successful ventures, all the while maintaining a profitable black-market trade in Dark Arts supplies. The Malfoys achieved an unparalleled level of prestige and respectability, moving in all the right circles, on close terms with top Ministry officials, a number of whom were on the family's payroll.

As he saw it, Balthazar Snape had been cheated out of his legacy. He had been born after the demise of the family business. Comparing his condition to Darius Malfoy's, he was certain that his misfortune was the result of his father's profligacy and debauchery. Unfortunately, what he had inherited were his father's intemperate desires. In his early twenties, he had been a slender, handsome young man, but he soon grew meaty and bloated, his bitterness increasing with his girth.

Whatever money had been left from the business, his father had placed in a trust fund, managed by the goblins at Gringotts, who could not be persuaded to advance any sums against the account. Balthazar resented this terribly, but it was his father's one wise financial decision. Otherwise, Balthazar would likely have lost what he did own - a rundown manor house, an old house-elf and enough to support his family and a variety of personal excesses without resorting to actual work.

Balthazar was not without a sense of ambition; however. He made numerous and valiant efforts to insinuate himself into the favor of Darius Malfoy, but for reasons Balthazar could not quite comprehend, Darius had no interest in welcoming Snape as a close associate. Of course, they were invited to the celebration in honor of the birth of the Malfoy's son, Lucius, but that was hardly remarkable; the entire wizarding community, or at least, its proper pureblood families, was invited to the lavish extravaganza. Several years later, Balthazar's wife Eris gave birth to a son, and the new father was elated. It was not so much that he was transformed by the joys of fatherhood, and in fact, did his level best to avoid the responsibilities that go along with bringing up a child, but rather, the birth of the boy reawakened a sense of purpose in him. Now there was new hope for improving his lot in life! Balthazar decided that his infant son Severus should become the Malfoy child's closest confidant and advisor. Uncharacteristically, his wife was in complete agreement with him on this issue, and the Snapes raised Severus with that goal in mind. At a very early age, the boy came to understand that the responsibility of reclaiming the financial and social standing befitting the family heritage was thrust upon his thin shoulders.