First - I deep and heartfelt apology for all of my followers waiting for updates on my other stories, but I just couldn't get this one out of my head. Hopefully, now that it's out, there will be some room left for my other ongoing projects.

As a side note - my first original work is almost ready for publication. You can expect 'Demons in the Dark' to be coming to an interwebs near you October 2015!

INTRODUCTION

1993 – Sunnydale, California

It was hot. Incredibly, unbelievably, bone meltingly hot.

Severus Snape did not DO hot.

Sure, the fact that he was wearing almost all black, probably was not helping, but if was going to have to dress in muggle clothing he thought he should at the very least be able to wear what he damn well pleased.

He cursed as he strode forcefully into the partial shade of a shop veranda in an effort to escape the unbearable, blistering, mind boiling heat. Why on earth anyone would want to live in California, and SOUTHERN California at that, he would never understand. This town wasn't even anywhere close to the beach, which was the usual excuse for enduring this sort of unending year-long heat. A thermometer displayed outside of a local church had helpfully declared the temperature 89 Fahrenheit (which he mentally translated to 27 Celsius). He idly noted that this particular town seemed to have an abundant supply of churches, and even more graveyards, but brushed it aside as he fiddled with his fold out map.

While normally he would have simply apparated either directly or immediately next to his final destination, the dark swirling vortex of black, chaotic magical energy churning just below the city streets made that utterly impossible. He knew well the Spanish conquistadors legends of 'Boca del Inferno', and had studied up on the mystical properties of such naturally occurring phenomenon, but had not been wholly prepared for the black oily feeling of magic that seemed to crackle and drip and spill through the streets of this otherwise sunny and completely pedestrian little slice of suburbia.

This left him, one Severus Snape, Tenured Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and a World Renowned Potions Master, standing on a street corner in the blistering heat glaring stupidly at his impractical fold up map as he searched it's neatly lined streets for any trace of the Sunnydale High School. Why on earth a Muggle High School would possess one of the last remaining copies Adolphus Raskus's 'Effects of the Lunar Cycle on the Lycanatoxic Properties of Monkshood' was beyond him, although the swirling mass of black magic beneath his feat may have had something to contribute to it. He could only be relieved that the school itself had recently adopted an electronic inventory, which was the only reason he had discovered the book in the first place. He had little more than a week remaining to the Easter Holidays with which to track down the books exact location and attempt to acquire it.

And so it was that he, Severus Snape, was standing on a quietly busy street corner, in unbearable heat, eyes flicking over his uncooperative paper map when he heard a voice call out behind him.

"Sev? Severus Snape?"

The bewildered potions professor turned sharply to see a rather startled looking woman about his own age staring unblinkingly at him on the sidewalk behind him. The woman huffed in general annoyance and shifted the bag in her arms to put a hand on her hip as she raised a sardonic eyebrow at him. As her eyebrow slid into a familiar expression another image hit him in a flash. One of a much younger girl, not yet truly an adult, quirking an expectant eyebrow at him from across a lawn covered with discarded glass bottles and red solo cups, eyes only for him even as a party raged in full force behind her.

"Jessica Lavelle?"