Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World-Chapter 5 - 4. Backstab.

Severus went straight back to the Slytherin common room. The moment his bedroom door shut behind him, the carefully held expression dropped away and he smiled.

"Haven’t lost the knack entirely. I nearly convinced myself." He pressed his wand to his temple, and for a moment his face tightened. "I didn’t think you’d still be worth anything." Two hours before the meeting, he’d found a fragment of Severus’s actual personality buried deep in the subconscious, and when he drew the wand away, a pale grey wisp followed it, drifting like a trapped firefly. "What am I supposed to do with you?" He studied it with a slight smile. "Get rid of you? Keep you for now?" Without that fragment, the performance in Slughorn’s office would have been hollow at best; he’d borrowed its emotions, and they were what had made the old man believe him. "Fine. Stay, then. You’ll be useful again." He raised one hand, closed his eyes, and murmured something low and indistinct. A thin green barrier formed around the wisp. Then he pressed it back into his own head and lay down on the bed, exhaling slowly. "That does make things considerably easier."

He rested for a while with his eyes closed, then got up and set to work. The moment he reached for anything to do with Salazar, information flooded up at once, and he couldn’t help feeling pleased.

"’The Greatest Dark Wizard.’ What an arrogant thing to put on a plaque. I’d like to see Salazar up against an actual dark mage. And Parselmouth," he said to himself, with a short, humourless breath. "If they think speaking to snakes is proof of dark allegiance, they’ve completely lost it. Idiotic, but not my problem to fix." He shook his head and pushed further into the memories. "Legilimency. That’s more interesting. Rare, even in my world: genuine mind magic. Worth looking into." The thought was barely finished before everything Severus had gathered on the subject rose to meet it, and the smile came back. "Apparently I wasn’t the only one who planned to study it. He put a lot of work together. Good. That saves time." He kept going, working through everything Severus had ever learned about the founder of Slytherin House.

An hour later, he’d absorbed it all. Nothing of particular use had turned up, which was mildly disappointing but hardly unexpected. No one with sense would leave that kind of information somewhere students could stumble across it.

"I’ll need to bring this to Slughorn. He’ll know more. For now, sleep. Tomorrow I can start walking the castle properly." He yawned, stripped off, and dropped into bed. "At least the beds are decent."

The next day opened with a Transfiguration exam, which he passed with an Outstanding and no real effort. Back home, Transformation was foundation-level work, the most basic branch of Eternal Transformation, which was a genuine discipline requiring Archmage-level understanding and power to do properly. He’d mastered it, of course, but his current core was too weak to attempt even the simplest version of it.

That said, he had to give the wizarding world its due. Basic Transfiguration here was genuinely more developed than what he’d known: the breadth of spells available was remarkable, and they’d been designed in a way that let even third-rate practitioners with poor control use them effectively.

During the exam he kept all of that to himself and worked entirely from Severus’s memory.

Leaving Minerva McGonagall’s classroom under her slightly thoughtful gaze, he started with the first floor. Not because he wanted a stroll: he was looking for hidden rooms. A castle this old had to have them.

The first floor held nothing beyond the obvious: classrooms for Defence Against the Dark Arts, Muggle Studies, and Transfiguration; a pair of teachers’ offices; the Gryffindor Head of House’s office; the toilets. He’d known that already, but he walked the full length of it regardless, running a low-level perception charm the whole way.

It took about an hour to work through every room and get a proper measure of the teachers. He had two years here, and he meant to use them. He kept to a Potions book the whole time, appearing absorbed in it, occasionally wandering without apparent purpose. That had been one of the real Severus’s habits: getting so lost in a text that he drifted through the castle without noticing. Mostly, though, the boy had craved quiet, hiding in empty classrooms and reading in peace, trying to keep clear of Potter and company. One reliable refuge had been the out-of-order girls’ bathroom on the first floor, where the ghost of a girl called Myrtle had taken up residence after dying there.

When Severus stopped in front of the door marked Out of Order, he could already hear it: quiet, persistent sobbing. That was entirely expected.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside, taking in the layout with mild curiosity. Sinks arranged around a large central pillar. That pillar gave him a faint flicker of suspicion, which he filed away without acting on. He looked toward the cubicles, and a ghost in school uniform came flying out.

"You again..." Myrtle pushed her glasses up and dabbed at her eyes, looking at him with that particular brand of concern that was really just sorrow turned outward. "Are they at you again?"

"Something like that."

"Bring them here next time. I’d give them something to remember."

"Maybe I will. But first: have you noticed anything unusual in here? Anything at all?"

"Unusual?" Myrtle rubbed her chin and shook her head. "Nobody comes here. Just you." She drifted in a slow circle around him.

"And how did you die? This is Hogwarts; someone should have been held responsible."

She blinked at him. He’d never asked before. In all the times he’d come here and locked himself in a cubicle with a book, he’d never once asked.

"Nobody’s ever asked me that. And I don’t remember all of it." She dropped her eyes. "There was a party, and I had a row with someone and ran in here. Then I heard hissing. And there were these enormous eyes, and then... nothing."

"Enormous eyes." He held up one finger and shaped a small eye in the air between them: vertical pupil, yellow sclera. He kept his gaze on her face. She went rigid, caught somewhere between fear and recognition. "I see." Salazar, you reckless lunatic, he thought, keeping his expression neutral. Hiding something like that in a school. But then, I should probably thank you. Skin, saliva, teeth, venom glands, eyes, blood, heart. He couldn’t quite stop the corner of his mouth from lifting. I might manage something very interesting indeed before I’m done here.

"Th-that’s... I... I..."

"Thank you. That tells me what I needed to know." He’d always thought well of Myrtle. In a way she’d been Severus’s second-closest friend, after Lily: the one who’d simply been present during the worst of it, and hadn’t tried to fix it, just stayed.

"THINK YOU CAN HIDE HERE, EH, SNIVELLUS?!"

The door hit the wall with a crack like a spell.

"Stupefy!" Three voices at once. Three white beams crossed the room and caught Severus square in the back. He lurched forward but stayed upright, and something sharp came into his eyes.

"Cowards! Striking from behind, three on one!" Myrtle’s voice rose in furious indignation, and all around her the taps began to run.

"Get out of it, crybaby, this doesn’t concern you." James hadn’t taken his eyes off Severus’s back, and he was grinning. "So, Snape. How does it feel? You made me look like an idiot in front of Lily. Today you’re going to—"

"And?" The complete absence of feeling in that voice stopped all three of them cold. Their eyes went wide as Severus turned around slowly.

"Silencio!" Another beam, from behind James this time, straight into Severus’s chest.

"Nice, Sirius! Now, Expelliarmus!" The wand in Severus’s sleeve shot out and clattered to the wet floor at the trio’s feet. "Let’s hear it, then. What’s the plan?"

"Not bad. Fast." Severus nodded, almost to himself, and the trio’s grins faltered. "What comes next?"

"We hang you up in the Great Hall. No robes."

"Hm. Ambitious. And after that?"

"We beat you first. Not much you can do without a wand, is there?"

"Stop it right now or I’ll fetch Professor McGonagall and she’ll have all three of you!" Myrtle planted herself in front of the Marauders, shaking with anger.

She knew exactly what it was to be on the wrong end of this. Watching it happen to the only person in the castle she considered a friend was more than she could bear.

"No need. I’ve got this. You’ve done enough." Severus raised one palm toward them and said, quietly, "Aguamenti." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The taps, the sinks, the toilet bowls: all of them erupted at once. Jets of water hit the Marauders’ wand hands and sent the wands skidding away, and then several streams as thick as a man’s forearm drove into their stomachs and slammed them into the walls.

"Myrtle. Tell anyone who asks exactly what happened here. Everything except the questions I put to you."

"Huh?" She hadn’t fully recovered when Severus’s colour left his face in one sudden rush and he went straight down onto the flooded tiles.

"STOP THIS AT ONCE!"

(Stupefy: a jinx designed to stun a target or knock it off its feet. Silencio, from the Latin silens, meaning quiet: a charm that removes the target’s ability to speak or make sound. Expelliarmus: a disarming charm that causes the target to lose whatever they are holding.)

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