"What?" Severus Snape growled, as he flung open the door to his private shop off Knockturn Alley.
"I"ve got a delivery for a Severus Snap," the man said, his arms full of wooden boxes.
"That"s Snape, you imbecilic incompetent," he barked.
It felt good to insult someone again; it had been too long since he had enjoyed the opportunity and for some reason it felt even better to do so with this deliveryman.
"Well, don"t just stand there gaping like an idiot, bring them in."
"Yes, sir," the deliveryman said, his eyes firmly on the floor. Snape marched through his hallway to his converted kitchen, swirling his robes dramatically.
The deliveryman followed him, and dropped the boxes down loudly on the counter.
"Gently, you oaf," Snape snapped. "Those ingredients are worth more than your life!"
"Sorry," the man grunted. "Sign here."
Snape signed the proffered parchment with a dramatic flourish. "Now get out," he snarled.
The deliveryman shrugged and turned, walking out and slamming the door behind him.
"Arrogant fool," Snape muttered to himself. He began to open the boxes eagerly and sighed happily. Potions ingredients always allowed him to forget everything else and do what he did best.
An hour later, with all his ingredients meticulously placed in their correct positions, he looked over to his order sheet and sighed again, although less happily.
A sex potion.
A stinking sex potion.
It was a travesty that a man of his talents was reduced to making potions to spice up the love lives of the idiot rich.
And it was that arrogant bastard Potter"s fault, he thought bitterly as he started his work.
Potter had corrupted one of his best Slytherins, and she had casually destroyed his life, like any good Slytherin would, with a throw-away comment.
He let his thoughts ramble on while he absently crushed some sopophorous beans with the flat side of a silver dagger and added them to some Valerian roots.
He had returned to Hogwarts after Potter"s funeral, as cheerful as he could remember. Both of his most hated people, Potter and Voldemort, were dead, and he could look forward to the future of intimidating children with something approaching joy.
Instead he found that there was rebellion afoot. He"d hadn"t even done anything - just made a second year Gryffindor girl cry - when one of his own students, his own, had called him a bullying coward.
Well, he wasn"t going to take that, even from his own House. He"d removed five House points and assigned a twenty-minute detention.
He"d presumed that would be the end of it.
Only it wasn"t. The next thing that had happened was Draco Malfoy, white with fear, begging him to find an antidote for the poison that Greengrass had forced down his throat.
Snape had initially been excited. Lucius would pay a large reward for saving his son"s life. It would make a major contribution to his retirement fund.
He continued working on the sex potion automatically, as he added the Ashwinder eggs, cleaning his hands afterward.
Things had gone on normally for a week before he had been ordered to attend a meeting of the Hogwarts Board of Governors.
He hadn"t been concerned. Lucius was back on the Board, and Lucius wouldn"t allow anything to happen to the man finding his son"s cure.
Only he had arrived to find that there was someone new in Lucius" chair - someone he didn"t recognise. The man explained to him that the Malfoy family was bankrupt, that someone had purchased all their debts and foreclosed on them. That Malfoy had overextended himself in his backing of Voldemort, and was now penniless.
He had cursed to himself - this was going to affect his retirement.
"And Professor Snape," the stranger had continued inexorably. "By request of the students of your House, and because of your appalling behaviour with the students of all Houses, we are removing you from the Head of Slytherin House position."
He had been stunned into speechlessness, and hadn"t even thought till later about the drop in pay involved.
It was substantial.
So here he was, spending his weekend making a sex potion, which had turned purple at the right time and had been stirred correctly throughout.
He"d abandoned the search for an antidote for the younger Malfoy; there was no way he was going to waste valuable ingredients and research time on the boy. He was positive that Greengrass was more than competent enough to make an antidote very difficult to find. She was a Slytherin after all.
He allowed the potion to cool for an hour, while he tidied up his workshop. It might be small, but it was one of the best laid out potions chambers in the world.
Magic, proper magic, not that stuff caused by foolish wand waving, went on here, and soon he would have the money to be able to purchase the ingredients he needed. He would make his cure for werewolves, sell it to a distributor for an absolute fortune, and then leave the country, long before the side effect - the death, after a year, of every werewolf who took it - was discovered.
He poured the lilac potion into a vial, and left a small amount for testing. He couldn"t afford to gain a bad reputation yet, so he always tested his creations himself (the non-deadly ones at least) to ensure that they were perfect.
They always were.
But he liked to be sure.
He swallowed the potion quickly and absently decided which of his students he would fantasise about as he relieved the effects of the sex enhancer.
And he yawned.
He waited for the expected rush, but all that came was another yawn, this one bigger, and he started to feel sleepy.
Sleepy?
Dread filled him. Something had gone wrong. He shouldn"t feel sleepy. But what had happened? He"d done the potion properly. He had even cleaned his fingers after touching the eggs.
Wait. He shook himself. He didn"t need to do that, they were only eggs after all. He stumbled frantically over to his supplies, not caring as he knocked his completed potions in all directions.
"Finite Incantatem," he whispered, and the box of eggs seemed to shimmer and change. It was no longer a box of eggs but asphodel in an infusion of wormwood.
But if you added wormwood infusion, instead of eggs, to the sex potion...
He slumped to the ground.
He"d just made his own death.
A living death.
He almost smiled. Of all the ways he had expected to die, this was perhaps the kindest.
Greengrass had certainly struck in style.
Still, at least Potter was dead as well. It was almost worthwhile to die, knowing that the Potter family had been wiped out for eternity.
He settled down onto the floor, and relaxed, wondering how Greengrass had managed to switch the ingredients.
The deliveryman couldn"t have known, even if it had felt so good to berate him. He hadn"t felt like that since the last time he"d insulted Potter. And the delivery driver had given him the same insolent look as Potter had.
"No," he whispered, as he tried to lurch to his feet. He fell forward onto his counter, desperately searching for something, anything, that might keep him awake.
The deliveryman had had green eyes.
The potions escaped his grasp, and he sank down, screaming as he fell into the endless sleep, a sleep that was an eternal nightmare.
A nightmare infested with Harry Potter and Daphne Greengrass laughing at him.
Forever.
Part 2
Hermione Granger sat in a large armchair with a copy of her favourite book on her lap.
It was a position she had been in countless times, and it had never failed to calm her and allow her to immerse herself in the book.
Until now.
So far, this afternoon, she"d calculated the size of the ceiling in square inches, counted the number of leaves she could see out of the window, and watched a spider build a web.
It was the book"s fault. The book was lying to her.
Or rather, the front page was lying to her.
Underneath the signatures of the authors (eight, over a thirty year period) was the untidy scrawl of Harry Potter.
"Thanks for always being there. H.J.P."
It was a lie.
She hadn"t been there when he really needed her.
None of his friends had been.
Only his new girlfriend had been there.
Everything had been so clear after Dumbledore"s funeral. She had been told the secret first - that the Professor had faked his death to allow him to get hold of the Horcruxes -, and she had been amazed at his cleverness, and swore to her allegiance to him.
Then she"d gone to the Burrow, and talked to Ginny, only to find out that Ginny and Harry had broken up. Well, she wasn"t going to have that. Ginny was perfect for Harry. She"d get them back together. She knew about Harry"s jealousy the previous year, as he"d watched Ginny and Dean, and playing on that would soon make Harry realise he was being silly. Besides, Ginny"s idea of just slapping him wouldn"t work.
Harry had been cheerful when he had greeted her at Grimmauld Place, and she was excited to see him. She couldn"t wait to see his face when he realised just how clever Dumbledore had been.
He"d grabbed her hand, and told her he had a plan, and that they"d talk later.
And that was the last time she ever saw him happy.
When he had come out of the meeting with Dumbledore, he had changed. His eyes had dimmed. She hadn"t really noticed it at the time, but when was hindsight not twenty-twenty?
He"d asked her, he"d begged her to go with him and deal with Voldemort.
But she"d said no, positive that Dumbledore knew what was best. And she"d said no again and again. Ron and Ginny had followed her - they"d felt the same way.
That Dumbledore had it all under control.
And so they had returned to school, and Harry had retreated into his shell - and it wasn"t really a surprise. He did that a lot.
Daphne"s words at the funeral echoed around her mind again. They had been haunting her, keeping her from sleeping.
"He understood that you can"t stand by and watch evil when you can do something about it. It was something that everyone else didn"t get. Every time someone died, Harry felt it. Every time someone was tortured, he felt their pain. He knew that it would continue until he defeated Voldemort.
"It was his sense of responsibility, his nobility, and everything else that made up Harry James Potter. I truly believe that forcing him to do nothing was the biggest torture that you could have inflicted on him. His soul had been dying bit by bit."
The words shamed her with their truth. They taunted her with their accuracy. She"d watched as Harry had slowly been torn apart, and not even realised what was happening.
She had failed him as a friend.
She had failed.
Ginny had tried to make him jealous, but he"d hardly seemed to notice. He just took to vanishing from the Common Room.
Hermione had tried to find him, tried to follow him, but couldn"t. It was almost as if Hogwarts was conspiring with him.
She didn"t even realise he knew about her and Ron. She thought she"d been so clever, hiding her relationship with him from Harry. After all, Harry never knew how long prefect meetings went on for, and it allowed them to have some private time before and after.
Some friend she had been, not even telling him that she was in love.
She thought it would have changed things between them, made it harder for him in some way, so figured that hiding it would be best.
She had failed.
And when she stopped being that friend for him, that friend who was always there for him, he found someone else.
Daphne Greengrass - a girl who had made the phrase "Ice Princess" a grim reality. A girl who everyone knew not to touch and not to play with. A girl who everyone knew was going to do exactly what she wanted in her life, and no one and nothing would stand in her way.
Only Harry Potter would see that as a good thing.
Everyone had known about how she had dealt with Draco, how the younger Malfoy was more terrified of her than he was of Voldemort.
Her best friend had fallen in love, and she hadn"t even noticed. She couldn"t blame him for not telling her - it would have been hypocritical to do so.
She lightly traced the outline of the words in front of her, his last message to her, and sighed softly.
He had chosen well. He had chosen a girl who didn"t second guess him, who understood where he was coming from, and understood that sometimes you have to fight for what you think is right.
Although she didn"t know it, Daphne"s casual revelation of the truth behind Salazar Slytherin had been like a shockwave through the school. Slytherin House had undergone a huge change.
Snape was no longer the Head of House. Ousted not for his behaviour with Harry, although that was a factor, but because the students had demanded that someone more open-minded be placed in control.
Draco and his allies, far from ruling, had then been treated as pariahs, as traitors who had dragged the name of Salazar Slytherin through the mud.
And Draco. She smiled slightly in admiration for what Daphne accomplished. The boy had looked awful, he"d lost weight, his hair was always filthy, and every waking hour when he wasn"t in class had been spent in the library.
For the first day after Harry"s funeral he had been loud and boisterous, fighting for his place in Slytherin, because of the overwhelming hatred among his former colleagues.
The second day everything had changed.
Hedwig had flown into the school and dropped a letter in front of him. A Howler.
Everyone knew that Daphne must have sent it, and everyone had held their breath while he opened it, an expression of pure terror on his face.
The Howler had been much shorter than everyone expected. Only four words.
It wasn"t a bluff.
Draco had seemed to fold into himself. He"d turned and run out of the Great Hall.
She had received an owl at the same time. Her message was different.
It was a bluff, so when he asks you for help in five weeks, say no.
D.
Daphne had been right. It had taken Draco five weeks to ask her for help. And she had moved closer to him, and whispered in his ear. "Drop dead."
Draco had started to cry and abandoned all dignity. He dropped to his knees and begged her for his life.
If he"d really been dying, she would have helped. But she turned on her heel and walked away, leaving him on the floor.
It was a resigned Draco who had turned up on the last day of school. With his family bankrupt, he"d had no one to turn to for help - except for Snape, and no one knew what had happened to him. He"d simply disappeared, abandoning the Potions classes to a substitute.
And Hedwig had flown in again with another Howler. She"d figured out that Daphne was sending them so that everyone could hear what was going on.
"You"re not going to die, Malfoy," the voice said - Daphne must have been whispering, as the Howlers amplification made it normal. "But now you know how the victims of your terrorism have felt. Live well, because next time there won"t be an elaborate charade. I"ll just kill you."
The final threat had been more chilling because Daphne"s voice hadn"t changed. It was a statement of fact, and Draco had known it.
The blond placed his head into his hands and cried in relief.
But seeing the final victory over Malfoy hadn"t filled her with glee. It reminded her too much of what she had lost.
Harry. Ginny. Ron. And how the four of them would have loved this.
While Ginny had forgiven her, their friendship had never recovered. They were polite to each other, but the closeness that used to exist had been broken.
The arguments she"d had with Ron had spiralled out of control. And no amount of time spent in a broom cupboard could make up for the hurtful things they"d said to each other, as they"d dealt with their grief in the worst possible way.
And so she had finished Hogwarts as she had begun it: with no friends. The only difference being that she"d had a wonderful friend. And she had lost him.