Water-horse (Snape fan fiction)

Shadows of the Past

Ch.3 — Shadows of the Past

"Professor Snape—"

The interruption came from the small, straw-haired boy in one of the front desks. It was a reedy but penetrating voice, and it had already been raised far too many times for Snape's liking. He had arbitrarily changed this morning's fourth-year Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw Potions class from a practical lesson to an exercise in theory in order to give himself time to think, and was not anticipating the ensuing pile of earnest compositions on 'The Use of the Bezoar in Muggle Persia' with any degree of enjoyment at all.

A glare failed to quell the questioner, who was now bouncing up and down in his seat, one hand waving. "Professor Snape — Professor Snape, how do you spell 'becunia'?"

"In your case, Mr Benham—" Snape's lip curled— "I would suggest very carefully. Sit down!" He rose and directed a cold black stare out over the rest of the class, most of whom appeared suddenly to have discovered serious faults in their work, and to be bent studiously over their scrolls in an attempt to amend them. "Five points from Ravenclaw. Any further interruptions will lose ten points for that House."

Two long strides brought him down to hover ominously over the shoulder of a lanky boy who had just muttered "Typical!" under his breath. "I beg your pardon?" Snape enquired very softly.

"Nothing." It was mumbled into the desk. The Hufflepuff didn't meet his eyes. "Nothing, sir."

"Ten points from Hufflepuff for insolence." Snape turned on his heel, robes flaring, surveying the room in a manner which reduced it momentarily to complete silence. As he returned to his place at the front of the class, the soft scratching of quills broke out again, accompanied by adenoidal breathing supposedly indicative of intense intellectual effort. There was no further sound.

Snape, who had woken late and then found himself obliged to spend his entire preparation hour in performing repeated Fresh-Air Charms to clear the betraying traces of the each uisge from the main part of the dungeon, eyed his class with immense dislike and closed his eyes briefly, trying to recapture his train of thought.

No-one knew, that was the trouble; no-one in any of the texts knew how the Unforgivable Curses actually worked. Those who used them cared nothing for scholarship and very little more for any abstract knowledge; those who might have made such things their study had been barred from research by the pusillanimous Dark Arts laws. There had been no study made of the effects of the curse on so much as a guinea-pig, far less upon the human brain.

Of course — a muscle twitched, high on Snape's cheek — of course, there had been a time when he'd had the raw materials for such a study literally spread out in front of him. When scores of Muggles and wizards had died under the effects of the Imperius Curse, leaping from buildings or flinging themselves under trains, their shattered skulls laid out like trophies at the Death Eaters' feet. A time when a younger Severus Snape had been seduced with undreamed-of freedom to carry out all the experiments that had been forbidden at Hogwarts, to nurture the talents they'd none of them been willing to acknowledge, to pay back every petty slight and self-righteous sneer—

   A trickle of sweat slid down his temple.

And then, following the Death Eaters, gobbling forbidden knowledge from the remnants they left, like a bird bolting down the scraps from a stripped carcase, he'd come to Voldemort's own attention. To his personal attention.

   Another bead of sweat clung...and slid free. And another.

His Dark Lord had been interested in his work; very interested. He'd had a taste of real power, with wizards three times his age hanging on his words, paying court to beg him to drop just a hint in his Master's ear on their behalf, eager to test as many poisons and potions and counter-philtres as he could give. More heady even than that had been praise from the Master himself.