Chapter Ten: Slytherins
Over half of the cotton mills in the factory town where the Snapes lived had shut down since Severus had come to Hogwarts, and in his third year there seemed to be no end in sight. More and more people in Spinner's End and the area around it were going on the dole. So far, Tobias Snape had been spared that. However, his health slowly but inexorably continued to worsen, and he was starting to have shortness of breath on Tuesday as well as Monday.
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Fenrir Greyback made the Daily Prophet for another attack on a child. Unlike Remus, this one died.
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The Slug Club was meeting. There were 12 members.
The Slytherin contingent was well represented: dull Crabbe, included only because he was the ranking seventh year Slytherin, sixth year Damocles Belby, fifth year Avery, fourth year Wilkes, third years Rosier and Snape, second year Regulus Black, and first year Crouch. Traditionally, the ranking Slytherin pure-blood from each year was a member of the Slug Club, no matter how undistinguished he or she was otherwise, but as sometimes happened, there was no pure-blood for one of the years. Damocles was a well-to-do half-blood, and the most talented Slytherin student at Hogwarts.
The non-Slytherin members were Ravenclaw fourth year half-blood Gaspard Shingleton, who had a knack for invention, Hufflepuff third year half-blood Greta Eisberg, who was a great cook, sixth year Hufflepuff MacMillan, pure-blood and rich, and third year Muggle-born Gryffindor Lily Evans, Potions genius and Charms whiz.
Severus hung out with Damocles and Lily at these get-togethers. Rosier preferred to sit with fellow moderate pure-bloods, MacMillan and Wilkes. Avery, Crouch and Black stayed close to Crabbe.
Severus came early, as usual, and helped Professor Slughorn with last minute preparations while the others started arriving. Rosier and Wilkes had stopped by the Hufflepuff common room on their way there, as usual, and came in with MacMillan and Eisberg. Next to arrive was Lily, who went over to see if she could help Severus and Slughorn.
Lily and Severus were arranging food on the side table when Crabbe came in with Black, Crouch and Avery. Slughorn was checking on something in the other room.
"Sevvie," said Regulus. "So chivalrous of you to help Evans with her chores."
"Quite the little house-elf, isn't she?" snickered Crouch.
Lily picked up a glass of pumpkin juice and made a show of adding something to it from a vial of clear liquid, which she had taken from a pocket of her robe.
Just at this point, Slughorn came back from the other room, and Crouch schooled his face to blank politeness.
"Why, Barty, how very kind of you," said Lily. "Here, let me serve you." She handed the glass to Crouch, who stared at it nervously.
Slughorn, who had missed the earlier exchange between Crouch and Evans, was glad to see them getting along so well.
"A toast," he proposed. "To friendship among the Houses."
"Here, here," said everyone who was there, taking glasses from the side table and taking a sip.
"Come, come, Barty, drink up," insisted Slughorn. "Or are you afraid our Potions maven here has slipped something into your pumpkin juice?"
At that, Barty had no choice but to take a sip, which he made as small as possible. Thinking his pumpkin juice spiked with Veritaserum, he avoided all conversation and left the gathering as soon as he could.
As Crouch was slipping out, Damocles and Gaspard made their entrance, engrossed in a discussion on cauldrons. They caught sight of Severus and Lily, picked up something to drink from the side table, and came over.
"So what do you two think?" asked Damocles. "Do you think the world could use a self-stirring cauldron?"
"There's been another werewolf attack. I think a cure for lycanthropy would be more important," said Lily.
"Not my area, not my area," muttered Gaspard, and went over to sit by himself, pulled out a quill and a scroll, and began to draw diagrams.
Severus put his hand out, palm up. "Pay up, Damocles."
"I don't think so," argued Belby. "He did actually say something. The bet was that I couldn't get him to say a word to more than one person."
"No," insisted Severus. "The bet was that you couldn't get him to enter into a conversation with more than one person. Muttering to himself as he walks away doesn't count."
"Lily, you call it," said Damocles.
"Aren't you afraid I'll be biased?"
"You?" said Damocles. "You'd sell your firstborn before you'd give a false judgement. I'll accept your verdict."
"Severus?" asked Lily.
"As the lady calls it," he said, inclining his head to her with a smirk.
"Muttering something in the hearing of other people is not the same as talking to them," ruled Lily. "I hope you didn't bet too much, Damocles."
The boy pulled a Galleon from his robe, and gave it to Snape. "I should know by now you only bet on sure things," he groused good-naturedly. "But you do have a good point, Lily."
"Which one?" she asked.
"A cure for lycanthropy would be more useful," answered Damocles.
"I'm sure the possibilities for making money are much better for the self-stirring cauldron," noted Severus. "If you actually do cure lycanthropy, you'll soon put yourself out of business."
"Hmmm," said Belby. "But it would make me more famous to get rid of werewolves, once and for all. Might even be worth naming a wing after me at St. Mungo's, don't you think?"
"On the other hand, if you get rich you could buy a wing named after you," countered Severus.
"Ah, the Malfoy method. But one popular invention does not a fortune make, Sev."
"True, true. But coming up with a cure for lycanthropy would be much harder."
Lily stood there watching the exchange and said nothing.
"All right, all right, don't think I don't see what you're doing," said Belby, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. "You know I'm more interested in fame than fortune, and I can't resist a challenge like that. Are you and Evans going to help?"
"Not me," answered Severus. "I'm too busy working on something else."
Lily tried to replay the conversation in her head, and figure out where it had changed from Severus trying to convince Damocles not to work on lycanthropy, to Severus trying to convince him he should. Slytherins never seemed to just come out and say what they were thinking. Between the Slytherin-dominated Slug-club meetings, and her friendship with one particular third year Slytherin, she was starting to figure some things out about the house of the ambitious.
"I'd love to," said Lily.
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Author's note
Mill closings
I'm using Bolton, a town close to Manchester, as something of a guideline for the location of Spinner's End. Quoting this website, http://www.bolton.org.uk/industry.html
"Of the number of mills, in the 1950's there were still 103 cotton mills, in 1966 there were 34, by 1979 just 8 remained."
Snape was born circa 1960, and when he approximately six years old, there were still 34 cotton mills in operation. During his Hogwarts student years, that number would be reduced to less than a third of that number.
Where'd I get all those people?
According to the Famous Wizard Cards, Gaspard Shingleton, inventor of the Self-Stirring Cauldron, was born in 1959, so it is conceivable that he would have been a fourth year when Severus was a third year. Inventing sounds like Ravenclaw to me, so that's where I put him.
According to HBP, Marcus Belby's uncle was Damocles, the inventor of the Wolfsbane potion. No surname is given, but it could have been Belby, and I don't like inventing names, so I just picked that. Since Damocles was Marcus' uncle, it's possible he was in Hogwarts when Snape was, and I decided to make him a sixth year. Also, I put him in Slytherin, because I see genius in potions as being more commonly a Slytherin trait, although I envision the occasional (rare) Gryffindor who cares about potions as being extremely talented as well.
According to the Famous Wizard Cards, Greta Catchlove, author of "Charm Your Own Cheese," was born in 1960, so I made her a third year like Snape. I guessed that Catchlove was her married name, and gave her the maiden name of Eisberg to go with her German-sounding first name. Cooking sounded Hufflepuff to me.
Ernie MacMillan is a rich, pure-blood Hufflepuff in Harry's year, so I imagined he had a male relative back in Snape's time as well.
Posted by Madmaxime at October 11, 2006 02:20 PM