Path of Twinkling Dusk

Disclaimer: All characters and references to Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowling who created the magical and wonderful world we fanfic writers all love to play in.

Author: Diamond-Raven

Story Rating: R (violence, non-graphic rape, non-graphic sexual situations, torture, drug use, swearing etc.)

Summary: Severus Snape’s long journey from an abusive and horrific childhood to Hogwarts,Voldemort and finally, the Order and how he finally found the light in a lifetime of darkness.

Note: This is a continuation of ‘Path of Glittering Darkness’ and ‘Path of Shaded Light’ which must be read before reading this part or else nothing will make sense. Unfortunately, I have too much ground to cover without going back to explain the importance of certain characters and hinting about past events. This is the last part of the trilogy, covering Severus Snape’s years at Hogwarts and the second war and how it all ends. Since this trilogy has been in the works for about three years, certain events in canon couldn’t be followed (since HBP hadn’t come out yet at the time) and obviously, my interpretation of the last book might be way off, but I’m going to do my best to stick to canon and come up with a plausible ending.

‘I’ve always found a fully deployed battle group to be the most effective negotiator.’

- Andromeda, ‘Point of the Spear’

January 2nd, 1982

Hogwarts School

Gorgon glanced up from the pile of parchment he had just sorted through and caught the yawn Severus tried to hide.

“Gorgy thinking maybe it time to sleep, huh? Get rest before big day?”

Severus shook his head, blinking hard to keep his eyes open but not putting down the papers he was leafing through.

“I can’t sleep, elf.”

“If not tired enough, take potion. Gorgy goes and gets it.”

Gorgon made to get up but Severus waved a hand at him. “I don’t want anything.”

“Then not put off sleeping any longer!” Gorgon’s voice had gone stern and he had crossed his arms.

Myrtle turned over from where she lay on top of the bookshelf in his office and widened her eyes, a grin on her face. “You’re in trouble now.”

Severus scowled, ignoring Myrtle and not looking at his elf. “We’re not ready yet, elf. I have more things to do. Besides, quit treating me like I’m ten. I’ll go to bed whenever the hell I want.”

Gorgon scowled right back and leaned back in his chair. “We go over everything ten million times! We not even prepare this much for spying missions! We ready, young master.”

Severus tossed the papers down and ran his fingers through his hair. “No, we’re not. I can’t do this, elf. I change my mind.”

Fawkes stopped picking at his feathers and glanced at him. “Why not pack up and run away? You’re very good at that by now.”

“Shut the hell up, bird.”

“Oh, don’t get your robes in a twist. I was joking.”

“Do you see me laughing?”

“Quit being such an irritating twit. You’re nervous about tomorrow, I understand that. Anybody would be. But we’ve done harder things that this.”

“Have we really?”

Fawkes rolled his eyes. “They’re just children.”

“They’re monsters. Rude, loud, impossible monsters. I should know. I was one of them.”

Myrtle burst out laughing. At Severus’ glare, she just laughed harder, her glasses nearly slipping down her nose.

“Shut the hell up, Myrtle.”

She kept laughing. When Severus grabbed a dictionary sitting on his desk and threw it at her, she let out a scream and covered her head, as if it actually hurt her.

After uncovering her head, she shot him a dirty look and sat up, her legs dangling over the edge of the bookshelf.

“Would you not be so mean? You’ll do fine. Everything’s ready, isn’t it? Everything’s prepared.”

“I know that.”

“Then why are you being so annoying?”

“I’m annoying?”

“Yes, you are. Gorgon, tell him he’s being annoying.”

“It not Gorgy’s place to get into the middle of such things.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

While his elf stared defending himself, Severus went back to looking over his lesson plans for the first day and the speech he had written up for his students once they filled the castle again tomorrow. Tomorrow. Merlin, they were going to be here tomorrow.

XXXXXX

If he was going to be truthful, they were ready. They had spent the past two weeks cleaning, arranging, fussing and trying to get the house back into some sort of shape before the Slytherin students came back.

After going through every inch of the common room and finding pounds of drugs and drug paraphernalia hidden in the most unlikely of places, they moved out into the corridors, and from there, the rest of the dungeons. Realizing that there was probably loads more hidden throughout the entire castle, Severus recruited some elves to help him and showed them what to look for and how to think like a teenage drug user trying to hide his stash from adults. After finding an entire pipe stuffed full of heroin in a broken, unused sink in the girls’ bathroom on the third floor, Rudy had exclaimed that the students—most likely Slytherins— were most remarkably similar to squirrels in the manner in which they hoarded away their stashes. After raiding the entire castle, Severus was reasonably sure that they had found most of it. After all, he had spent months hiding his own stash from his elf and knew all the tricks there were.

They had taken the entire stash they had found and Severus had coaxed Gabby into helping him get it down to Knockturn Alley. He had gone straight to Xavier, who was still easy to intimidate and Severus had gotten a very good price for the drugs—with Xavier expressing a desire to remain in the ‘good graces of the servants of our dearly departed lord’. Severus hadn’t bothered to correct him, knowing that his previous employment and status helped get him the best price possible. Gabby had found this enormously entertaining, especially considering the fact that nearly half the stash had been Xavier’s drugs in the first place and he had just bought them back at about twice the price he had originally sold them for.

When they had gotten back to the castle, the real cleaning was in order. Severus had gathered all the elves and demanded to know how they could allow the Slytherins to live in such a mess and did they know about the number of rats he had found down there? There had been an uncomfortable silence until Gabby had confessed that certain Slytherins had considered it an entertainment to bounce elves all around the common room, hang them from the ceilings or put all sorts of funny jinxes on them. Rudy had gone to the headmaster to complain, who had tried to enforce the proper treatment of house elves to the Slytherin students, but had only been met by defiance, rudeness or feigned ignorance. Agreeing that the elves had a right not to be treated that way, he allowed them to stay out of the common room. For the past three months, nobody had cleaned anything in the common room.

This became more obvious than ever before when Severus and the elves started cleaning it. Dust, bits of rotting food, newspapers, scraps of parchment, broken quills, random pieces of clothing and heaps upon heaps of cigarette butts and empty bottles covered every available surface in the common room and all the dormitories. After a day of cleaning, Severus declared that he would either make sure the elves weren’t mistreated if they agreed to come back and clean the common room, of he would imperio all the students twice a week to get them to clean their own mess.

It was during their cleaning that Severus had his second encounter with Tabitha Coolridge. After their first meeting, she had defied Gorgon’s predictions that she would come back to Severus to ask for help with getting the silencing charm lifted. She had instead gone down to the kitchens and cornered one of the elves and stuck a knife to his throat until he finally got the message and removed the charm.

She mainly stayed in her room, leafing through magazines, smoking and listening to her radio at volumes that should have rendered her stone deaf five years ago. Severus had been quite impressed with the little stone which had been charmed to belt out certain songs which it had been charmed with. He didn’t know where she had gotten it from, but the magic impressed him enough not to bother her about it.

Severus left her alone, not wanting to bring about another confrontation, but when they had cleaned very available room except for hers, he went and hammered on her door, hoping that she could hear him over the screaming from the radio. Gabby held her ears and Gorgon muttered that he was glad he was getting older and his ears were going rusty. When she refused to open the door, Severus grit his teeth. Deciding that the mature thing to do would be to quietly open the door, he threw that idea out the window. Waving his hand at the door, he watched as it was torn off its hinges and was blasted inwards, slamming into the far wall with a thud that cracked it into four pieces.

Tabitha had sat up on her bed, her face for once filled with panic and not the usual air of boredom and indifference that she favored. She spent one moment looking back and forth between Severus and the door, before she forced her face back into its bored expression and leaned back on her bed.

“What the hell do you want?”

He waved another hand at the small stone sitting on the desk and lowered its volume considerably. “First off, to remind you that when somebody knocks on the door, it usually means that they wish for you to open it, which, if you had any manners whatsoever, you would hasten to do.”

She rolled her eyes and leaned back on her bed. “Whatever. Get the fuck out of my room.” Reaching down, she grabbed her cigaretttes and lit one with a lighter.

Aware that Gabby was gaping at him and Gorgon was grinning, Severus once again fought the urge to throw up his hands and walk out.

Instead, he flicked his hands and vanished her cigarette, the lighter and the pack of cigarettes on the bed, at the last minute remembering that he was supposed to be using his wand for these things. Sitting up with a jerk, she glared and opened her mouth.

“If you’re going to start spouting like a broken sewer pipe again, I’ll just put another silencing charm on you, one which I hasten to add no elf will be capable of removing.”

She clenched her jaw and stared at him, her eyes filled with loathing and anger. “Give me back my smokes!”

“I told you you’re too young to smoke and that these dormitories aren’t well ventilated and smoking won’t be tolerated indoors from now on.”

“I don’t care!” Severus noticed that she was keeping her language civil, even if the volume and manner were both off.

“You should. Lung cancer isn’t restricted to muggles. Besides, you’ll look like you’re eighty by the time you’re twenty.”

“I don’t give a damn. I’m not twenty.”

“Nor will you ever reach twenty if you keep this up.”

“It’s none of your business!”

Deciding that it was much too hypocritical to start having debates about drug use with her at this moment, he decided to change topics.

“I need you to clear out of here for a few hours while we clean the dorm.”

“You aren’t touching any of my stuff!”

“I don’t want to touch any of your stuff. I’ll just be checking for drugs and cleaning things up a bit. You can’t seriously want to live in such a mess anymore.”

“I don’t care! It’s my room! Don’t fucking touch anything!”

Once again feeling exhausted and feeling like the conversation was going nowhere, Severus briefly debated what to do. Chances were that she wouldn’t willingly get out of her room unless he forced her to, and he didn’t want to do that. Nor did he think she would agree to quietly sit by while they rummaged through her things and confiscated all of her drugs and alcohol.

Finally having come up with an idea—not a sane one and not one which the headmaster would probably approve of, but a very Slytherin idea none the less—he glared at her.

“This is your room then, hmm?”

She crossed her arms as she sat up, looking cocky and sure of herself. Severus nearly felt sorry for her but then squashed that. “It sure as hell is.”

“Then this is your door, hmm?” He gestured at the broken pieces of the door.

“Yeah. And you busted it so you fix it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Me? But it’s not my fault that it broke.”

“You busted it! I saw you!”

“Of course I broke it, but only after you refused to get off your rear-end and open the door. Infact, if you would go to class once in a while and learn a simple door opening charm, you wouldn’t have to get up or have your door broken down.”

Her expression darkened and she glared, looking ready to leap off the bed and attack him. Her hand went to her pocket where she kept her wand but Severus kept still, knowing his reflexes could wipe the floor with hers.

“Fix my fucking door!” she screamed.

Severus raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think so. You want it fixed, you’ll have to figure it out yourself.”

Turning on his heel, he strode out of the room, not looking back. Once outside, Gabby was looking at him with pity and Gorgon sighed. “That not went good. Not at all.”

“You think I don’t know that? What the hell else was I supposed to do? I can’t let her walk all over me.”

“Like Gorgy saying before, it constant war.”

“I’m fucking sick of it already.”

As they left, Severus quietly sent a sleeping charm towards the room. A few minutes later, he went back and checked and saw that she was sleeping. He spent a few minutes staring at her. Only while sleeping did she really look like a twelve year old girl. Only in sleep did her anger, hate and bad attitude not consume her.

Calling Gorgon and Gabby back in, they started cleaning the dorm. He briefly debated not going through the suitcases thrown into a corner beside her bed with the contents spilling over onto the floor— a mess of clothes, magazines, broken quills and empty bottles.

Deciding that none of her clothes looked like they had been washed in about ten years time, he started going through the piles. Sending the clothes off to be washed, he sorted through the various other stuff in the suitcases. Throwing the garbage into the usual pile in the center of the room, he carefully arranged the rest of her things. He took her magazines and smoothed them out and put them on a desk beside her bed. Reaching the bottom of the suitcase, he found a small, crumpled photograph. He glanced at it, immediately recognizing the woman on it from the facial features she shared with the young girl sleeping on the bed beside him. They were obviously her parents, and from the way the photograph wasn’t moving, he guessed that one or both of them were muggles. He also knew from the headmaster that they were both dead and Tabitha spent her summers living in a group home. He smoothed out the picture. He could see fingerprint smudges on it and deep wrinkles and knew that it had been folded and refolded and looked at many times. Glancing at her still form on the bed, he quietly called for Rudy.

“Yes, Master Severus?”

“Would you mind doing me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Would you run down to Hogsmeade and get me a picture frame?”

“Picture frame?”

“Yes. Preferably one to fit this picture.”

“Ah, Rudy sees. Would Master Severus prefer unbreakable frame and glass?”

“No need. They’re more expensive and I can do the charms by myself.”

Rudy nodded and immediately vanished. By the time Severus was done cleaning the room, Rudy was back and Severus went to work. Reporting that he had asked the shop owner for useful charms for getting wrinkles out of the photograph’s surface, Rudy demonstrated the charms and the picture smoothed itself out. Vanishing the stains and fingerprints from the photograph, Severus carefully inserted it into the new picture frame. Putting the necessary charms on the frame to keep it from breaking or staining, he put the framed picture on the desk beside her bed, on which he had also put her radio stone.

Pulling out a piece of spare parchment, he thought for a moment and then started writing.

Since this if YOUR room, you might want to decorate it in such a manner. I’ve given you a head start. On a sidenote, pictures are not meant to be kept in the bottom of suitcases if they are meant to last. That’s what picture frames are for. I suggest getting acquainted with the concept.

Signed,

Your new head of house

PS The door is still your problem. Learn to open them and I won’t have to break them. As for how to fix them, try using your head. What magic can do, magic can also undo. That’s all the help you’re getting.

Re-reading the note, he smirked to himself and left it propped up beside the picture where she would see it. Walking out of the room, he pulled out a list of things he still had to that day. As he walked away, he waved his hand over his shoulder, slowly lifting the sleeping charm from Tabitha.

Next on the list was moving into his new room and office. He was so used to his own room that the thought of a new one seemed unnecessary and a bit frightening. But Gorgon reasoned that their old room was too far away from the Slytherin dormitories, and besides, there was lots more room for books in his new room. After removing all of the hideous decorating Bodin had left in place, Severus surveyed his new rather plain looking rooms. There was a small livingroom with chairs and a low table and quite a few bookshelves. A bedroom and a bathroom lead from the room, both of which were small but were plenty for the two of them. Not wanting to spend any money if they didn’t need to, they cleaned and fixed up the ageing furniture which Bodin had left behind. Realizing that he still only had one robe and one cloak—which also happened to have a dark mark insignia hidden on it—they went to a second hand shop in Diagon Alley and bought some cheap extra robes and undergarments. Fascinated by the muggle clothing he saw in the piles in the store, Severus tried on some jeans and a few shirts. Enjoying how much less restricting these clothes made him feel, he bought some and hid them in his closet, not wanting anybody to make a fuss out of him buying muggle clothes. They were clothes, that’s all. While they were arranging things in the closet, Severus was surprised to discover a beautiful brand new black cloak hanging on one of the hangers. Seeing the Slytherin insignia on it, he guessed it was his teaching cloak. He made a mental note to go up and thank the headmaster as soon as they were done. That presented the problem of what to do with his Death Eater clothes. He had thrown his old robe out, the stains and tears on it now impossible to get rid of, but he knew he should keep the other things, none of them knowing what the future would hold. He put his cloak, the silver rope, his gloves and his mask in a small box and hid it beneath the floor of his old room, feeling like he was really tucking away the past few years of his life.

Gorgon also brought up the few books they had left behind before they had left for the dark manor and neatly arranged them on the large, empty bookshelves which sat in the living room. Severus nearly wept at the thought of all the books which were still in the dark manor, many of which had undoubtly been ruined in the collapse but many of which had to have survived intact and now lay hidden somewhere, magic keeping them concealed. Master’s entire library, his own collection of books and the books he had kept in the workshop were all invaluable, rare tomes. Rather than dwell on this, he went browsing through Knockturn Alley, rummaging through dark, musty little shops filled with various odds and ends, their owners grubbing through the garbage for anything that looked like it could be something and then sticking it on a shelf. To his surprise—and disgust—people threw away books by the bucketfuls. He found entire sets of volumes of books and old classical books which could have sold for hundreds of Galleons. After going through every store which had books in them, Severus and Gorgon were once more on their way to having their bookshelves filled with books. Both of them felt quite proud of having saved so many precious volumes from near destruction.

Gorgon had suggested putting the potions orientated texts in his office, but Severus shied away from it, knowing that there were going to be reckless children in that room far more often than in this one. He wasn’t going to put any books in harms way if he could help it.

He pushed aside the problem of decorating his office, knowing he could deal with that later.

The classroom was in surprisingly good shape, but the storeroom was another matter. There were a few unwashed cauldrons sitting in the corners and buckets of rotting eels and dusty spiders on the shelves. Throwing them out immediately, Severus sat down and wrote a ten page list of ingredients he knew the students would require and things he would require. At the bottom, he wrote down that he wanted it all delivered within two months at the most and that the supplier knew what quality he expected and what price he was willing to pay. At the top of the list, he drew a dark mark, knowing even the tiniest details from memory alone. Vanishing it into the paper, he spelled it so it would show up as soon as the paper was touched. Rolling up the list, he handed it to Fawkes and asked him to drop it into Xavier’s lap without being seen. Loving the thought of scaring the daylights out of the fat contraband dealer, Fawkes took off without a complaint.

In the last two days before the students were due to come back and flood the dungeons, he sat down with Gorgon and started going through the syllabus. The minute he saw that giggling potions were still on the second year curriculum, he marched up to the headmaster’s office and declared that he wasn’t teaching anybody how to make giggling potions. It was a useless waste of time and the potion didn’t involve any new skills or concepts that would make it educational.

His eyes twinkling, the headmaster had cautiously agreed that he could take a few things out of the curriculum and could redesign certain aspects, but that he should keep in mind that he had to keep the ministry happy and that he was teaching children, not Potions assistants.

Going back down, Severus and Gorgon stayed up all night piecing together things from the old syllabus and adding in potions and skills they had been using to teach the Potions Assistants and train the initiates. After a lot of shuffling, he finally had good, practical syllabuses on hand, in which he had condensed first and second year material into first year, moved everything over and redid the curriculums for NEWT classes entirely. The level of difficulty for the NEWT classes had been ridiculous and Severus couldn’t believe they had been allowing kids to graduate with those skills alone. When Gorgon expressed some concern over the level of difficulty and speed in the earlier years, Severus had waved it aside. If they were good, they’d be able to keep up, if not, it was the perfect way of getting them out of his classes before the really interesting research projects of the upper years were tried. He had never been a slacker in class and had always kept up and knew that it wasn’t unreasonable to expect the same from others. Gorgon had again tried to point out that Severus was extremely intelligent and loved to learn and had a natural talent where potions were concerned, but he was again silenced. Severus would teach them everything they needed to know and if they kept up on their own, they’d do well.

Professor McGonagall had looked over his revised syllabus and to his surprise had nodded, agreeing that the level of difficulty in potions had been severly lacking in recent years and that it was about time people started treating it like the difficult discipline it really was. After hammering out three months worth of lesson plans, they fell into bed, knowing that they had two more days to get things perfect before the monsters moved back in.

XXXXXX

Now they only had seven hours until the train came back. Rather than dwell on the fear welling up inside of him and the desire to rush up to the headmaster’s office and tell him that thank you, he had changed his mind and would write to him from Argentina, he spent the hours feverishly going over his lesson plans and scribbling in things and scratching them out again.

He wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight anyway, even if he tried. Tabitha had taken to spending more time in the common room now that it was clean enough to sit in and didn’t feel like bringing her radio down with her. In order to fix the problem, she had turned up the volume loud enough to vibrate every piece of furniture in the room and rattle the stair railings. Rather than deal with her, Severus let the music keep him awake, and found to his surprise that he was getting rather used to it and enjoyed listening to something other than silence while working. After all, he was still a teenager in some ways.