A/N: I owe a huge debt of gratitude to J.K Rowling for her extraordinary story-telling and world-building.

This is mostly finished work of 48 chapters which I plan to update regularly. The POV will alternate each chapter between Severus Snape and the OC, and their stories will be intertwined. I welcome your reviews and questions.

I've decided to rate this M for now, due to some adult themes/content (nothing really graphic or explicit, and nothing underage), but it's not really a darkfic. There will be some fluff and good feels. Eventual Mentor!Snape and Snape &OC friendship (it's sort of a slow build).


Snape was standing in front of the fire beside the Dark Lord. He'd been nervous the first time he'd been allowed him to speak to him in this informal way, thinking perhaps the Dark Lord was being insincere, attempting to trap him. Now he'd become used to it and stood with his hands at his sides, at ease.

The Dark Lord turned from the fire to face him. "Well, Severus? You have news for me?"

Snape looked into his eyes. "My Lord, I have accepted a teaching post at Hogwarts School."

There was a pause and the corners of the Dark Lord's mouth lifted very slightly. "I must confess I was beginning to think it unlikely he would ever trust you enough," he said. "It seems I have overestimated the old fool. You played on his weaknessess, I suppose?"

"Indeed my Lord. I told him of my most sincere remorse, of my deepest concern for the boy and his mother." Snape imagined he was talking about someone else, someone he cared nothing about, and made himself smirk as though it were all some joke, and the Dark Lord returned his amused gaze. Snape was sick inside but didn't show it.

"You have done well, very well."

"My Lord knows that I seek only to serve him." Snape knelt and turned to leave. He had barely eaten or slept for days and his legs were a little weak when he Disapparated.

Most of his clothes and his potion-making supplies had been kept at Malfoy Manor, where he'd been staying, but he Apparated outside his mother's house in Spinner's End to get the rest of his things from his bedroom. Most of his photographs of Lily were there, the ones he didn't keep tucked inside his robes.

His mother was in the sitting room, reading a book. She wasn't much older than fifty, but her face was deeply lined and the hair around her forehead was white. He could see the sharpness of her collarbone along the neckline of her faded Muggle dress. He had been avoiding her. She'd been questioning him about what he was doing and where he was going and he was finding it difficult to come up with explanations.

She looked up when he came in. "Come home finally, Severus?."

Snape tensed. He didn't like to be here, though it was better now that his filthy father was gone. Already there were more books along the shelves than there had been when he was alive.

"Hello mum," he said as he made his way to the sofa. He sat down, running the loose threads through his fingers. "I have some news," he told her. "I'm to start a new job next month."

She spoke slowly, quietly, her voice a bit scratched. "Well, I'm glad to hear you've found steady employment finally. And what exactly does this job involve?"

"I've accepted a teaching post at Hogwarts school." For a long moment his mother didn't say anything, she simply looked at him, and he understood something then of how much the school had meant to her.

"What will you be teaching?" she asked quietly.

"Potions."

"That was always one of my favourite subjects." She spoke quietly, almost tentatively, and perhaps, he thought, with a trace of bitterness. They were quiet then, his mother sitting and staring at the fire. After awhile she stood up. "Well," she said. "I suppose I should get dinner on."

He watched as she made her way to the kitchen, standing over the stove she had stood over so anxiously when he was a child, but she seemed more relaxed now, less hurried. He read while she she made pea and ham soup for them and when it was finished they sat down together at the small table in the kitchen.

"Is Professor Slughorn retiring then?" she asked him.

Snape looked up at her from his soup. "No," he told her. "I'll be taking some of his classes."

She was quiet a moment. "He taught me as well, you know. Said I had a knack for it." He was sure of the bitterness in her voice now. It was startling to think of how many regrets she must have had, and how there was nothing to be done about them. He wasn't sure what to say, and they didn't speak much the rest of the meal.

After they'd finished and she'd washed the pots by hand she went to the sitting room and picked up the book she'd been reading. He summoned one off the shelf for himself they read for awhile, until he clapped at the pain his arm. His mother looked up sharply.
"Are you alright, Severus?" she asked.

"I'm fine," he said absently, setting his book down. He made his way out the door before she could say anything more, and Apparated to Malfoy Manor, to meet the Dark Lord.

His mother was still sitting up when he got back. "Where did you go, in such a hurry?"

"It was-someone needed an antidote," he said. He'd come up with an answer quickly, but he couldn't quite meet her eye, and he had the feeling she didn't believe him.

He made his way up to his room, exhausted. It was dark and reminded him of all those days he spent lying alone the summer after Lily stopped speaking to him. He was too tired to think too much of that now, and to his relief fell asleep immediately.

He stayed with his mother for a month, eating his meals with her, sitting and reading with her in the evenings. He had to hurry off a few more times when his mark burned, but his mother did not ask again where he'd been. He wondered if perhaps she didn't want to know.

Just before the start of term, he carefully packed his photographs of Lily and his books into an old suitcase. When he'd finished packing and came into the living room with his things, his mother was sitting by the fire again. She got up to meet him.

"Good luck, Severus," she told him. He felt her hands close over his. She looked at him as though she wanted to say more. Or perhaps he was the one who did. But after a moment she let go.

"Thank you," he told her. He looked back at her a moment, then left the house.


Graihagh and her dad were standing on the pavement along Charing Cross Road, looking for a place called, if they'd read it right, The Leaky Cauldron. She couldn't see it anywhere, and might have thought the whole thing a big, elaborate joke, but the stern-looking witch who'd come to her house looked like she never joked about anything.

As she watched all the people walking up and down the pavement she was glad her dad insisted she brush her hair for once and that she was wearing a new blouse. Her dad made something of a contrast to her, with his lighter hair and eyes, softer and a bit rounder where she was all sharp skinny angles. But she liked this about him. Sometimes she would still crawl in his lap like she was five years old.

"Are you sure you've got the directions right, Graihagh?" he asked her.

"I think so," Graihagh replied, looking down at the piece of parchment she was holding. "It says it should be right around here."

She started scanning the street frantically. "Dad! There it is!"

Her dad didn't seem to know what to say, and she could tell he'd been starting to think the whole thing a big joke himself.

The inn looked a lot like how she'd always imagined a magical pub to look. All wood and stone and candlelight and she could see cloaked men smoking pipes and a few women in pointed hats drinking from tankards. For a magical place, it was subdued; people spoke in whispers, or just sat without saying anything.

"Hello. What can I get for you?"

Graihagh just about jumped. A man with a bent back and only a few teeth had approached them from the bar. It must be the barman Professor McGonagall had told them about. Graihagh was curious about him, and about this place, but she was more curious to see Diagon Alley. Professor McGonagall had told them they were in the middle of a war, and she wasn't sure what to expect. She thought of pictures she'd seen of bombed out buildings and rubble.

"We're looking for Diagon Alley," she piped up.

He beckoned them into a little courtyard and took out what looked like a pointed stick. "See this brick here? Just give it a little tap with the wand and..."

A hole had appeared in the wall. The hole grew bigger before their eyes before turning into an archway with a long crooked street just beyond. Graihagh and her dad didn't even try to hide their shock as they stepped through, mouths hanging open like characters in a poorly acted children's programme she'd seen once.

Dozens of stone and wooden shops stood along the street. Some were boarded up or had broken windows, but some were draped with flowers and vines, and had windows full of cauldrons and owls and telescopes and beautiful orbs and golden instruments she'd never seen before. There was some interesting new thing everywhere she looked, and thought she must've been a funny sight with her head constantly swivelling in all directions. She was looking everwhere but right in front of her, and suddenly she hit something soft. Or someone.

"Oops," she said in a rush, "I'm..." but the words sort of wandered feebly away as she looked up at a young man with long black hair that covered part of his face. He was staring down at her with his dark eyes narrowed, his mouth in a sneer. He said nothing, which was almost worse than if he' d shouted at her to watch where she was going.

He let the moment drag on a few more unbearable seconds before saying very coldly, "I would watch where I was going if I were you." He looked like he'd just spent the last ten years in a dark bedroom listening to Bauhaus and drinking out of a skull, like her cousin in London.

As she replayed the encounter in her mind and thought of all the nasty comebacks she wished she'd used, she noticed that everyone seemed to be in a hurry. The tense and anxious faces made an odd contrast to the whimsical surroundings. A man in a long black cloak leered at them as they passed, and a woman was drawing the curtains around her shop and taking the signs down.

By the time she was finished with her shopping, she had a wand, robes, a cauldron, and a stack of interesting-looking books. She liked the owls, but had passed on getting one because she'd decided to bring her old cat Scooter with her. Most of the shopowners were nice to her, even though she looked sort of uncertain and out of place. At Flourish and Blotts she'd knocked down a display of books but a wizard had simply flicked his wand and the had books re-stacked themselves almost instantly. Graihagh hoped that spell would someday spare her a lot of tidying up.

She was slurping a large chocolate and peanut butter ice-cream cone outside Florean Fortescue's, watching a small, skinny boy who walking alongside an important-looking man in flowing robes, when she heard shouting. She turned her head and saw a man with long white hair staggering across the stones, face red and tight.

"Can you hear it?" He'd stopped and was turning to stare at everyone, eyes wild. Everyone around was silent."Can't your hear that?" He thrust a finger in the air as if scolding them. "The ground!" he shouted. "The ground is crying out with their blood!"

Graihagh just stood there and stared. She'd seen a few weird people back in Douglas, but never anyone quite this barmy.

Two people in matching robes had run up to him. One pointed his wand and he slumped into the other's arms and they pulled him away. She felt a light touch on her arm, and she started walking alongside her dad, still turning her head to stare. As they made their way back to Muggle London, Graihagh was beginning to wonder just what kind of world she was entering into.