Snape's Other Worst Day

"It's this way, Severus. You're smart, you're talented, and you're inside. That's why they want you in the Order". James Potter stopped pacing and looked Severus Snape directly in the eye. "I don't like you. Never have, never will. Nobody likes you: you're a creepy, skulking, unsanitary social cripple. And if you think Lucius Malfoy and the rest of the Hitler Youth don't laugh themselves sick over your pathetic little schoolboy crush, you're a bigger fool than even I take you for. Think they won't drop you like a bad habit when -- not if -- it suits them? Think Lucius letting you suck his cock once a week constitutes a love affair?" James started pacing again.

"He's offering you revenge -- but you won't get it, Severus. Remus may cut you some slack, but as for me and Sirius -- we're better than you'll ever be on the best day you'll ever have, and either one of us will cheerfully kick your greasy ass any time you like, with magic or without.

"You've got to get over this childhood trauma thing, it's done with and nobody's going to apologize. We're not schoolboys playing stupid pranks now; it's nothing to do with us anymore, if it ever was.

"Look, I'm off. I said I'd talk to you and I have. If you decide to do the right thing, you'll know how to find us..." James turned on his heel and strode off.

If he could have remembered how to do it, Severus Snape would have wept; he hadn't done it since he was a child, however. It was obvious in retrospect that the melting smile on Lucius Malfoy's beautiful face was contemptuous amusement, nothing more. What had James Potter called them? Hitler Youth? With their delicate fair faces, huge fortunes, great rambling estates, ancient mansions? Severus' skin was coarse and swarthy, his facial features fashioned on a generous scale; yet even though he knew his breeding was as good as that of any of those fine-boned, wealthy thoroughbreds, they intimidated him. As a shabby, cringing eleven-year-old, he was already well versed in the art of slipping unnoticed into corners and among shadows; if his housemates had noticed him they would have dogged him mercilessly, but as they did not, he was able to convince himself that he was not the lonely, outcast target of opportunity that Potter and Black and Lupin discovered him to be.

Eventually, Severus Snape chose. James and his wife had been martyred and their baby son had vanished, as it were, into thin air. The werewolf has disappeared as well. Sirius Black had gone to Azkaban Prison for the murders. Lucius Malfoy had named him godfather to his son by the pinch-lipped, empty-headed bleached-blonde pureblood girl he had married. The little boy would be his father's image for looks, but his desperate and continually frustrated efforts to please his father put Snape painfully in mind of a plainer child.

But James was dead, his little clique scattered. Where was the Resistance now? Resolutely shuttering his mind, Severus took up his quill.

______________

Dear Professor Dumbledore,

As I understand that the position of Master of Defense Against the Dark Arts has at present no incumbent, I humbly submit myself as a candidate for this post, or any other for which, after review of my Curriculum Vitae, I may be deemed suitable.

In anticipation of your reply, I remain

Your most obedient servant,

Severus Aquinas Snape