The Importance of Being Sirius

The Importance of Being Sirius

Chapter One

Severus:

I won't bore you with a long monologue about how nothing was my fault. Some things were my fault, of course, and others weren't. Black will probably inflict a long hysterical rant about my numerous shortcomings on you, so I will merely say this: I was not entirely to blame. And Black is an utter imbecile, so you'd do well to treat his opinions with extreme caution.

I will begin at the beginning: my first day at Hogwarts. The first student I ever met was Black, who I met as we were both trying to board the train to Hogwarts. In a typical display of rudeness he walked straight into me and then deliberately stepped on my foot, before walking off smirking as if he'd done something very clever (which I suppose by his standards he had). I spent my first train journey in the corridor between the compartments, rifling through the pockets of some abandoned robes. I made a fairly good haul, if I remember rightly - enough galleons to pay for my ticket home again, plus a packet of sandwiches. But it was a long journey and I spent it alone.

I first met Narcissa in the sombre elegance of the Slytherin common room, the first day that I arrived. I was trying to take in my surroundings without appearing too impressed with them. In fact, the contents of the common room were probably worth more than our entire house, but I had the sense not to say so. So I was looking round with a façade of nonchalance, when I became aware of two students sharing a green leather armchair, their heads bent over the same book with an air of contented absorption.

They belonged; I could see that at once. Both beautiful, both pure blood and well born, both imbued with that curious air of invulnerability which comes with youth and strength. They were as unlike me as could be imagined. I'm not the type to cherish ridiculous illusions, I know full well that I was (am?) deeply unattractive: gloomy, ill groomed and plebeian. People's eyes slid over me without really registering my presence. I didn't know at that time just how useful being able to disappear into the shadows would be. The bright extroverts may have more popularity, but they're also easy targets: look at James Potter. Or the ever-idiotic Sirius Black, for that matter. Where did being noticed get either of them? Give me the shadows any day.

Narcissa:

Let me begin my story with a memory: a small boy, standing in the unaccustomed luxury of the Slytherin common room, staring around him with a remarkably old expression in his dark eyes.

He was nervous, of course. His face was carefully expressionless, but his hands gave him away (beautiful hands, by the way - he had the long elegant fingers of a pianist or strangler). His fists were clenched; even from across the room I could tell that he was digging his nails into the palms of his hands. Later I thought the action a curious metaphor for his personality: most of what he suffers he inflicts upon himself. But then, that's Severus Snape for you. I watched him for a while without him realising it; I noted his sullen, sensitive face, his unexpectedly generous mouth and (alas) the nose he had yet to grow into.

Not good looking, oh no, but far from uninteresting.

I had seen him at the sorting, standing hunched amongst a crowd of first years, staring around him with a well-feigned look of scorn. He spoke to nobody, but as he waited to be sorted I saw his hand slip into the pocket of the boy in front of him and emerge clutching a handful of galleons. Curiouser and curiouser. I felt a twinge of admiration: it was neatly done; if I hadn't been staring at him I would have missed it, and I don't think anyone else there noticed at all. When it was his turn to be sorted he strode up to the sorting hat and rammed it on, glaring belligerently round at the rest of the school. After a good few minutes, and what seemed to be a lengthy argument going on inside his head between him and the hat, the hat said irritably:

"Suit yourself, you can go in Slytherin. Just don't blame me!"

He never would tell us where it was the hat first wanted to put him; he was always good at keeping his mouth shut. I hope it was Gryffindor, that would have been extremely amusing, but I don't suppose I'll ever know for sure.

He was clever, I could tell that. Ignorant of many things, naturally, and with a sizable chip on his shoulder. He was full of resentment, and probably destined to be alone. But full of potential. I was intrigued, I admit, despite his transparent lack of lineage. Some impulse led me to nudge Lucius and draw the boy to his attention. He looked at him for a moment, and nodded faintly: he agreed with me.

We seldom disagreed, even then. Our last real argument was in fifth year, which resulted in both of us ending up in the hospital wing for a large part of the summer term. Since then we were almost like one entity, hardly needing to speak to communicate. We even looked alike, so much so that we were habitually mistaken for brother and sister. After we left school we became even closer, arguments became unthinkable. It was for the best, I suppose. Arguments in fifth year were dangerous enough. A fight between us now might prove fatal. I do not enjoy being crossed, and Lucius is more or less the same.

"I'm going to talk to him," I told Lucius.

"Suit yourself," he replied. "If you want a way to break the ice you could try offering to lend him some shampoo."

Snape, standing awkward and alone, stirred uneasily, as if he knew were discussing him.

I stood up, and made my way across to him.

Severus:

I stared openly at the two sitting in the chair with envy. Their heads were so close that their pale hair was mingled, gleaming in the firelight. The boy was completely absorbed in what he was reading and oblivious to my gaze, but the girl soon realised I was studying them, she looked up at me and I saw that her eyes were pale, absolute grey, as unyielding as the sea. She didn't smile; instead she nudged her companion, who turned to study me with eyes as cold as his friend's. I looked down, embarrassed and suddenly conscious of my own inferiority.

They seemed to confer for a minute between themselves, then the girl stood up in one fluid movement, and came towards me. She walked not merely as if she owned the place, but as if she could have paid for it five times over if she'd wanted to. It was the first time I came face to face with the authority of money.

"You're new," she said, when we were standing face to face. It was not a question. Her voice was low, and cultured. She didn't pronounce the words like I did. I felt suddenly annoyed at her irreproachable superiority.

"You're very observant," I said acidly. I was faintly irritated. She's seen me at the sorting after all, of course I was new. Besides, I was nervous, which always makes me sarcastic. Irony was my defence, a wall between my fear and me. She smiled when I spoke, but her eyes didn't change.

"What's your name, mudblood?" she asked softly.

"Snape," I said, ignoring the invective without effort. Words leave no mark, and I'm used to insults and verbal abuse. Possibly the reason I can cope with being a teacher without suffering a nervous breakdown.

"I'm Narcissa LaMotte," she said, as if I would somehow have heard of her.

"Very pretty," I said sarcastically. "You must have very strange parents."

"You must have very ugly parents," she replied, studying me with undisguised distaste. "Do you take after your mother or your father?"

"My father's dead," I said. She looked at me without sympathy, but not without interest.

"Do you care?" she asked. I suddenly liked her. She was the only person I'd ever known who hadn't reacted to the news of my father's death with the words "I'm sorry". Words so empty it was pointless to utter them.

"No," I said. "Good riddance, if you ask me." If I'd known her better, I might have hinted that the tragic accident was in fact neither tragic nor an accident. But I didn't. It was for the best, I suppose. Some things are better kept to oneself.

Sirius:

This is completely ridiculous. How can you expect them to tell the truth? They're Slytherins, aren't they? Isn't that just another way of saying habitual liars? Anyway, I'm going to put the story straight here. Anyone who thinks that Snape was innocent and didn't know what he was doing can leave this minute. Because he was just the same slimy bastard at school that he is now.

I didn't believe in love at first sight at the time - how many eleven-year-old boys would? - but I recognised the fact that it was possible to detest someone instantly, before speaking a single word to them. It was like that when I saw Snape for the first time. He collided with me when we were both boarding the train to Hogwarts.

"Watch it!" I said. We both stared at each other for a split second and looked away, already hating each other.

He didn't say anything, just looked at me as if I was something he'd scraped off the sole of his shoe, then picked up his suitcase and stalked off. Later he claimed that I'd deliberately stepped on his foot, but that's a complete lie. Git. I forgot about him on the journey down, I met a couple of other first years one of whom was called Clarence, ate a few chocolate frogs and slept. Someone who I later discovered was Remus came rushing into our compartment looking for paper bags for James, who was feeling travel sick, but apart from that it was a distinctly boring journey. (Odd actually, you'd think it would be Peter feeling sick, wouldn't you? As it happens James was always a terrible traveller, even portkeys made him sick, whilst trusty old Wormtail was never ill in his life).

It came as no surprise to me that Snape was sorted into Slytherin - you didn't have to be at Hogwarts long to realise that they were all basically evil, and Snape was the worst of the lot. He actually wanted to be there, I heard him telling one of his friends/minions afterwards that he'd bullied the hat into putting him into Slytherin. Typical. Sometimes I wonder why they don't just get rid of all the Slytherins, it would do everyone else a huge favour...or they could just get rid of Snape, I suppose...

Dumbledore:

Sirius I must insist that you return to the story. This is no place for histrionics about how much you dislike Slytherin. I wouldn't let Severus get away with this sort of thing, and I'm not going to stand it from you either.

Sirius:

Fine. I was just pointing out how untrustworthy they all are. Believe them at your peril, that's all I'm saying. Especially Snape, the greasy idiot. Honestly, I can't believe someone as intelligent as Dumbledore could be stupid enough to hire him - alright, I get the point, back to the story.

Anyway, after the sorting I didn't see that much of Snape. I mean, I'd try to avoid anyone as ugly as he is as a matter of course, but I also had other things to think about : I had friends now, James, Remus and Peter. Just the four of us, our own little gang. We didn't bother with anyone else very much, it hardly bothered us that some people said we were odd.

Snape, of course, was one of the people who said we were odd the most frequently. He didn't stop at odd, either. If I was going to tell you all the names he called us I'd be here all day. Of course we didn't let him get away with it, but I always used to wonder why he hated us so much. I mean, colliding with someone on the way onto a train doesn't usually earn you their undying enmity, does it?

It was only later that I realised that he was jealous of us.

I suppose someone as pathetic and lonely as him - I'm not running him down, Dumbledore, it's completely true - was bound to envy us. We were the perfect team, after all, always laughing and always together.

Remus was the deceptively innocent-looking one, the kind, clever one no one ever suspected of anything. Peter was ambitious, painfully studious yet never quite making the grade. Except in potions, for which he had a bizarre talent that left the rest of us baffled. James was the one everyone loved: clever, handsome and wildly energetic. And then there was me: the ringleader. Or so I liked to think, anyway.

Narcissa:

Ugh, spare us the mawkish nostalgia, Black. Your saccharine reminiscences are of no relevance to the story, and are also deeply uninteresting.

After our little tête-à-tête on the day of his arrival, I took Severus under my wing, for which he was extremely grateful. As well he might have been. With Lucius and I to look out for him he could escape much of the bullying he would naturally have received. He was the type, as I'm sure you'll realise, who were often victimised. But after it became common knowledge that Lucius and me were his friends, the bullying abruptly ceased, and Severus was left more or less alone. (Not that we didn't bully him ourselves a good deal, but that was only to be expected, and if Severus minded he hid it as well as he hid the resulting bruises). I took a kind of pride in his increased confidence, the change in the way he walked and held himself. In the months that followed his arrival he began to speak more and scowl less. If it had not been deeply out of character for a Slytherin to do so, I think he would have taken to skipping or some other inane form of happy movement during this time.

Although his expression altered slightly, I can't say our patronage did much to improve his outward appearance. Lucius often encouraged him to pay more attention to his personal grooming, and even went to the effort of lending him a bottle of extremely expensive shampoo, but he never made much headway.

"Don't you even care that your name is a byword for all that is greasy and hideous?" Lucius would snarl exasperatedly, after vainly trying to convince Severus that once a fortnight is not often enough to wash one's hair. Severus would just shrug, and look irritated. If he hadn't been so much in awe of Lucius I think he would probably have said he couldn't care less about hair products, but knowing how Lucius treasured his collection of shampoos and conditioners he didn't dare.

Severus was deeply useful to us, or we wouldn't have taken so much trouble with him. He knew more curses than either of us (no mean feat), and although he was always rather vague about how he had learned them, he had no scruple about using them on every opportunity. People started to be slightly nervous of him, and he began to enjoy it. If Draco's accounts of school are anything to go by, he has continued enjoying it to this day.

Sirius:

Does this actually have a point besides indulging your abnormal fascination with Snape and unfolding the wonders of your husband's beauty regime?

Narcissa:

You're an idiot, Black. Keep your mouth shut or I'll remove it.

It pains me that Severus could ever have envied people as dull as Potter and Black, but it was unfortunately the truth, as I soon discovered. I kept an eye on him, partly out of interest and partly out of caution, and I soon noticed the way he had of staring at Potter and his equally irritating friends whenever they weren't watching. At first I suspected some kind of adolescent crush, but I soon realised that his gaze was directed not at one particular imbecile but at the whole bunch collectively. With a mixture of irritation and relief, I realised he was jealous.

I suppose he will say that what happened was motivated by hatred, that he wanted to sabotage them, but it wasn't. Not that he ever said anything; I suppose he felt rather ashamed of being jealous of an idiotic band of first year Gryffindors who had adopted the not-particularly-catchy name of the marauders. (Some people thought it was a daring, rebellious sort of name, and looked up to them. Personally I always found them deeply pathetic).

Well, I clearly had to do something. Whilst Severus' feelings were hardly unnatural (we Slytherins don't really do closeness, and at that age children always want to belong to a group, however stupid the group may be), but it clearly couldn't go on. It was making Severus miserable, and other Slytherins were beginning to notice. If they had realised the truth the consequences would not have been at all pleasant for Severus. There would have been questions asked about why he was in Slytherin in the first place, how the hat hadn't even wanted to put him there.

So I told Lucius. Not because I though he was more intelligent or efficient than me, but merely because we always share our problems; discussing them together makes difficulties almost enjoyable. We would always take a broom each and fly up to one of the highest roves of the castle, where we could sit and talk with no danger of being overheard. It was pleasant to sit there in the late afternoon, staring down at the school grounds glowing in the sinking sun, and throwing the occasional roof tile down onto the heads of those below.

Lucius was scornful when I told him what was wrong with Snape of course, he's always been independent and he didn't really grasp the concept of wanting to belong.

"We've got to knock some sense into him," he said grimly, "otherwise there's no knowing what he'll do. You've noticed he's started hanging round them more and more?"

I didn't need to be told that the them he was referring to was the happy band of morons generally known as the marauders.

"Do you think he'll do something stupid?" I asked.

"Like try to make friends with them, you mean?" Lucius replied, stretching luxuriously over the blanket we had brought to protect us from the cold afternoon, and taking a sip of the hot chocolate I had just summoned from the kitchen.

"Something like that," I said. "Do you think there's much danger of it?"

Lucius shrugged.

"I don't really want to find out. People are already starting to comment, and you know how fast news spreads in this place. Can't you think of a way to talk him out of it?"

I thought of the longing I had seen in Severus' face as he stared after the laughing group of friends that he would never belong to. It was not something that anyone was going to talk him out of.

"No," I said shortly. "We'll have to find another way."

"Some kind of memory charm?" Lucius hazarded.

"Too risky. Start messing around with his mind and who knows what might happen. His brain's his one asset, it isn't fair to put it in jeopardy," I said decidedly.

"Well, you think of something then," Lucius said. I could tell he thought I was being soft. I stared into space for a few moments, trying to think of a plan. Then it hit me:

"Polyjuice," I said smugly.

Severus:

I always wondered why it was that Narcissa suddenly took it into her head to teach me how to make Polyjuice. At the time I just assumed that it was a fortunate chance -

Sirius:

Not very bright, are you?

Severus:

I will ignore that comment. And incidentally, Narcissa, thank you for your touching concern for my mental well-being. It warms my heart.

If I may now be allowed to continue without any more stupid and inappropriate comments from stupid and inappropriate people who are clearly too inane and mentally subnormal to think of anything better to say and probably technically insane due to their long and well deserved stay in Azkaban...

Dumbledore:

Severus...

Severus:

Well, hecklers aside, I feel that I must point out at this point that my motives have been completely misinterpreted by everybody.

I was not jealous of Potter and Co, I did not want to be one of them and I most certainly did not learn to make Polyjuice potion for this purpose. I thought that pretending to by Sirius might be a way of finding out information that I could use for my own advantage. I was being devious, sneaky and underhand. I also thought this would be an opportunity to cause trouble, which is always a treat for a genuine Slytherin. Please do not misjudge me and believe that I was motivated by any perverse desire to be liked and to belong.

I had friends of my own, remember. Friends much more intelligent than that collection of no-hopers could ever be. Anyway, I hope that this has cleared everything up. I was trying to make trouble for Black, not to become him. So when Narcissa offered to teach me how to make the potion, I was delighted. I anticipated a brief, enjoyable period of spying, with some amusing and ironic moments (I find this view of espionage deeply touching in view of my later experiences with Lord Voldemort). And so when I drank the Polyjuice one Saturday morning trying not to think that it had some of Black's hair in it (ugh, what a horrible memory) I was feeling pleased at the prospect of sowing discord.

Of course, I could never have predicted what was going to happen afterwards.