Chapter Two

“Misery loves company
And company loves more
More loves everybody else
But hell is others”

- Misery loves company, Emelie Autumn

There was eleven months between Remo and Jane, who were very non-identical twins, and Sarah. Since Remo and Jane were born in February, and Sarah thus was born in December, they ended up in the same class. Neither Jane nor Sarah were very pleased about this; the former was bothered by her sister’s flirtatious way with men – all men – the latter was annoyed by her sister’s apparent despise for them. But the two sisters had always been unlike in disposition, and since they were small they had been constantly fighting over every single thing, leaving their father a veritable wreck every time.

Remo didn’t really mind having them both there, except perhaps for the embarrassment it was going to cause if they started fighting. He was closer to Sarah than to Jane, despite the fact that they were twins, but it wasn’t as if he was planning on spending much time with either sister anyway.

Upon entering the classroom the three of them were immediately under the scrutiny of a room full of seventeen-year-olds, and even though they were standing quite close to each other, the way they were measured and judged put them in completely different worlds

Jane was met by a compact wall of indifference, and she couldn’t tell if it was because they saw an ugly girl, or a scrawny, nondescript boy; possibly it had something to do with the sullen look on her face, but she opted for strong defence in any social situation, especially one like this.

Remo saw looks that were ranging from scandalized to confused to repulsed. He smiled, thinking that offence was the best defence anyhow. And the way quite a lot of those looks lingered… well, he had a feeling some of them weren’t that upset to have him there.

Sarah was smiled at by the boys, and she smiled cheerfully back at them. The girls also smiled, mentally filing her under ‘enemy’. A girl with such a short skirt and such a pretty face had to be one. She would be their friend soon enough and they would all fawn over her, but an enemy she would be nonetheless.

Of course there were only single seats left. No chance of them sitting together. Sarah easily located the central gang, the hub, of the class, and sat down among them with easy confidence. They swallowed her up whole. Remo also sat down on the edge of the gang, looking as though he did not notice the hostile looks the guys were sending him. And Jane, born and bred outcast, was left with two options. The first one was tempting; the empty couple of seats at the back of the classroom. But she knew that this was a bad defensive strategy. She would single herself out even more and make herself even more vulnerable to attack. If she, on the other hand, sat down next to the other loner – a chubby girl sitting by herself at the furthest corner toward the windows – she would undoubtedly mark herself forever as an outcast, but she would also provide herself with some kind of protection in that she wasn’t alone.

Since she was already firmly set on becoming an outcast anyway, it was a reasonably easy decision to make.

Without looking at them she passed four rows of people who were just as uninteresting to her as she was to them, and sat down next to the blonde girl at the corner. However, a closer look told her that she had misjudged the situation. The girl was a misfit rather than your everyday grey mouse. She had faded pink colour in her hair and dressed like someone who wanted to convey attitude. The look in her washed-out blue eyes as they fixed on Jane was sullen and a bit hostile. Jane realised that she’d probably been holding the seat for someone.

Damn. This girl would provide no protection since she obviously already had a friend, and being close to her would draw fire rather than repel it.

The teacher said something about that they were welcome to class and reminded them that they should prepare a short presentation of themselves for the class conference at the end of the day, and then started class.

“I’m Jane,” Jane said over the din of people scrambling though their bags for books and pencils. The fair-haired girl looked up from digging through her own bag, her eyes narrowing, and Jane found herself wondering who this girl saw when she looked at her.

“Sam,” she said shortly. “You’d do best not to sit next to me again. Melanie won’t like it.” She went back to her excavations of the pounds of debris that seemed to fill her bag. Jane didn’t need to ask who Melanie was, for she was at the very centre of centre, the hub of the hub; she was pretty and slim and blonde, and not the dirty blonde of Samantha but a sleek platinum colour that looked like it could glow in the dark. She was talking to Sarah, and Jane knew they were going to be Best Friends and confidantes at the end of the week. Not because Sarah really was anything like that girl; it would’ve been more tolerable if she was. But Sarah played along because she enjoyed the game, while Jane was completely uninterested and besides didn’t know the rules.

Actually, like hell she was going to be playing any kind of game.

“You are not getting rid of me that easily,” she informed Sam coolly. And then she demonstratively hid herself behind the cover of the conveniently large textbook, wondering if she was getting herself into something she wouldn’t be able to handle.

Remus had moved his stuff into his hateful new office. Why did they always closet away the school psychologist and nurse in drab-looking, claustrophobia-inducing little rooms with beige walls and broken blinds? He wondered how the school board would react if he repainted his room in some colour that didn’t make him want to take Prozac just by looking at it, and sighed. That was not going to happen. He’d just have to close his eyes and think of the pay check.

His room was connected to the nurse’s by a small waiting-room furnished with mismatched chairs. Every centimetre of free wall space seemed to be decorated by posters encouraging safe sex and a healthy diet, small slips of cardboard with the phone numbers to NSPCC, hotlines for the suicidal and various clinics, and comic strips about teenagers which adults would find funny and adolescents would find insulting. Remus wasn’t surprised, but he wished he could’ve been.

The nurse was an energetic lady who referred to the students as ‘children’ and brought him a cup of offensively bland coffee while she chattered on as though they’d known each other for ages. Remus felt he must have the words ‘school staff’ stamped somewhere where everyone could see them, and he couldn’t. That would explain the nurse’s behaviour, since schools attracted a certain kind of people, and if you’d worked at one school for long enough you had basically worked at them all. The nurse had probably recognised his type the moment he shuffled in through the door, in the same way that an elk recognises trees.

“So, are you married?” the nurse – Marcie? Marie? Her name seemed to have slipped in through one ear and out through the other – asked him cheerfully, filling up his cup with more of the disgusting coffee before he had a chance to decline.

“No. There never seemed to be much time for that.” God, he was really lying through his teeth. The truth was that there had always seemed to be far too much time and no one to fill it with. He hadn’t even been properly in love since he was, what, eighteen? Sure, he’d had a couple of boyfriends and one girlfriend, but he’d kept them around for the comfort they brought rather than for the depth of his affection, and he’d stopped doing that when he realised that no matter how shallow his attachment was, the break-up would nonetheless be painful. If he was going to be in pain, at least he was going to be so for the sake of someone he actually cared about.

The nurse looked at him with badly concealed pity, but Remus really didn’t mind. He’d spent far too much time in his life pitying himself to resent others for doing the same. “I take it you are?” he said and nodded towards her left hand, where two golden bands were gleaming, making sure that his air was unaffected and cheerful. Being forty years old and single might be tragic, but he’d rather not act the part expected of him.

She told him about her husband and where he worked, about her two children and what they were studying, about a friend’s daughter who was studying to become a psychologist – and from the way she seemed to assume that he would be interested, he gathered that she had no clue that he didn’t in fact have a degree, or any other kind of academic support for his job there other than a Bachelor’s degree in pedagogy. He was relieved, as he no doubt otherwise would have her questioning everything he did in a friendly, concerned way that would, in the end, result in that he had to strangle her with her own stethoscope.

“Sir?”

“Danny! Come in!”

Dan sighed and opened the door enough for him to slip in. He had been afraid of this. When his father had suggested that he would take an administrative job at Lucius’ office, it had seemed like a good idea. It would look good on his CV to have worked close to the CEO of Tornado Inc. But if he was going to be treated like doted-on nephew at his own workplace then he wasn’t sure that this was going to work.

Lucius sat behind his desk, looking as handsome and wealthy as he ever did. “Nice to see you, son,” he drawled, gesturing at the chair opposite his. Dan’s father had told him that Lucius had worked many years of his life in the US, and it was becoming apparent to Dan’s mind that this had done nothing good for the man’s personality. ‘Son,’ indeed! Lucius was still smiling, apparently unaware – or merely ignoring? – the young man’s critical scrutiny. He pressed a button on his phone, winking at Dan before he spoke into it. “Cassie, be a darling and bring some coffee and biscuits, will you?”

“At once, sir,” the phone replied in a mechanified version of a woman’s voice.

“That’s my girl,” Lucius said before letting go of the button. Dan was starting to have a sneaky suspicion that Lucius treated everyone he worked with as a beloved younger relative. He tried to decide if this was going to make his time there more or less bearable, but couldn’t come up with a conclusive answer. And while he thought, Lucius in turn watched him...

Dan had changed quite a bit in two years. His hair was still rather long, but gone were the unkempt hardrocker curtains which before had obscured much of his face, and the black hair was now neatly trimmed and held in a small ponytail at the nape of his neck. The thick eyeliner was replaced with a much more discreet frame of black eye shadow, and in place of the baggy black pants and leather robe was now a pair of neat suit trousers and a shirt. Still black, but Lucius supposed he got that from his father... undoubtedly along with the cheerful and lively disposition. He wondered if it was physically impossible for a Snape to crack a smile more than once a day.

The young man was clearly not impressed by him, and that amused Lucius. He remembered how cold and aloof Severus had been when they were young and Lucius had decided on a whim that the two of them should become friends. The same expression was in the young man’s eyes right now, the same cynical mistrust of anyone who didn’t take life quite as seriously as he did. But he also knew that Dan was trying to be professional right now, and that he actually wasn’t quite as stiff as his father. He’d just have to take his time with him.

“So, have you settled in well in your new house?”

Dan shook his head. “The movers had the last of our stuff in place only yesterday. We’re still staying at the hotel.”

“It’s right on the edge of Suburbia, the way I heard it. The neighbourhood quite close to is supposed to be pretty rough?”

Dan shrugged. “It doesn’t bother us. We like the house.” Lucius noticed that he was still on the defensive, but that he was relaxing a bit.

“Oh, yes. It’s a beautiful house alright.” Lucius smiled, remembering. “I miss living in a house, you know. Our flat is all very fine, but there is something special about a house.”

Dan’s eyebrows quirked, possibly at the thought of someone dismissing a two-million-pound flat as merely ‘fine’, yet Lucius was sure he saw recognition in his eyes. There was something special about living in a house. It was an almost childish feeling of having your own secret fort.

He left it at that, steering the conversation towards Dan’s new responsibilities and everyday tasks. But he was sure the young man would stay now, and sooner or later he’d get the kid to loosen up a bit.

He’d just have to give it some time.

“Fetch the toilet paper, Sam.”

"Okay.”

Three minutes later she was back, dumping not only the toilet paper but two bags of snacks in the trolley. Peter looked up with a package of minced meat in each hand, giving her a pleading look. “Explain to me how the fuck I’m supposed to keep to my diet if you keep insisting on that we buy stuff like that?”

“You don’t have to eat it.”

Peter rolled his eyes, grabbing the bags of snacks while still holding onto the minced meat. “Have to doesn’t enter into it, and you bloody well know it. I will whether I have to or not. And besides, you know the school nurse said...”

“Fuck the school nurse!”

Peter’s eyes flashes. “I will not tolerate that kind of language from you, young la- Fuck me senseless for five quid!” He had turned around, intending to put the meat back so that he could go and get rid of the snacks, and had managed to walk straight into someone’s back. This someone gasped and dropped the basket he was carrying. Entrecote, cans of capers and olives, spring onions and a large numbers of avocados spread in a widening circle on the floor. A can of Greek yoghurt hit something and broke, the white substance slowly leaking out over the floor.

“You mean that kind of language,” Sam said poisonously as the stranger turned around. But her father was suddenly looking very strange as he stared, transfixed, at the person he had collided with.

“Sam?” he said weakly.

“Yes?”

”Shut up.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Hello, Snape. Sorry about that.” His voice was thin and feeble, and he sounded positively mortified. The tall, black-haired man raised his eyebrows, a small, superior smirk gracing his lips.

“Pettigrew? Well, fancy that.”

Sam took in the well-tailored clothes the man wore, the expensive wares he had dropped, and also the amused way he watched their own cheap clothes and their trolley full of economy size packs of food. She reached a conclusion, and instant and absolute loathing filled her. Who the fuck did he think he was?

“Father, I couldn’t find any mangrove safe scampi in this shitty place and the scallops were all frozen... Men vad i helvete?” A young man, perhaps four or five years older than Sam, stared at the mess on the floor. Whatever it was he said in another language, it was probably not very polite. “Father?”

The man was still wearing the same gloating little smile. “Nothing to worry about, Dan. Just a bit of an accident. This is my old school friend, Peter Pettigrew,” he said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. Sam’s father blushed miserably. “Pettigrew, this is my son, Dan.”

“A pleasure,” Peter said in a small voice. Sam just stared at him. Why was he laying himself flat for this asshole to walk all over? Boiling with anger, she stepped up next to her father, putting her hand on his shoulder and glaring at the hateful man.

“And I’m Sam, his daughter. And who are you?” She saw her father sending her a panicked look, but ignored it. She was not going to let this happen.

“Sorry, how terribly rude of me,” his voice was silky and positively dripped with sardonic amusement. “My name is Severus Snape. It’s a pleasure to meet you... Sam, was it? What a pretty name.”

Sam was about to bite back, but her father pinched her on the neck and sent her a warning glare. “I... uhm... I haven’t seen you around here before?” he said, so falsely cheerful that it set Sam’s teeth on edge.

“No, we just moved in. This appeared to be the nearest accessible store, so...” The man let the unsaid assurance that he would never be seen at a discount shop like this one otherwise hang in the air, and Sam felt her hatred for him deepening by the second. Her father laughed a brittle little laugh.

“Of course, there are better stores just some blocks away if you move in towards town,” he said. Sam wanted to scream. Why was he making it so easy for that jerk? What was he trying to do, humiliate himself so that the other man would be spared the inconvenience?

“Why, thank you. I shall remember that. Now...” He looked at the wares on the floor, and Sam had to turn away in disgust as her father obediently kneeled down and started picking up the food. Tears stung in her eyes. This was absolutely horrible. She barely waited until the man was out of earshot before she exploded.

“Who the fuck was that asshole?”

But her father, who was leaning on the counter with his face in his hands, shook his head. “Don’t say that about him,” he said, his voice muffled.

“Why shouldn’t I?! You... He... What was all that about?”

“That,” said Peter tiredly, looking up, “was poetic justice in all its glory.”

“So, how in my son doing so far?”

Lucius looked up from his contemplation of his glass of wine. “What? Oh, fine. He’s a quick learner.” He stretched and stood up, disposing off the wine on a nearby table. Severus, watching him, thought that even though they were wealthier than most, Lucius, swanning about in his fine suit, always looked out of place in their home. Then again, no matter where he was, Lucius always looked like he was cut-and-pasted from a business magazine, so maybe that wasn’t so odd. He took a sip of his own wine, slowly twirling the glass between his long fingers.

“Do you remember Peter Pettigrew?” he asked.

Lucius gave him a perplexed look. “No, I can’t say I do. Who’s that?”

“Black and Potter then? Remember them?”

“Well, of course. They were the jerks that made you hate school because they kept making you miserable. After all the times you turned up on my doorstep with a face as purple as a plum, I should think I remember. And didn’t Lily get together...”

Severus nodded abruptly, and Lucius fell silent. He understood that the memories still pained his friend.

“Well, Pettigrew was one of their hangers-on. Him and Lupin.”

“Lupin? The one whose mother...?”

“Yes. Exactly. Well, I met Pettigrew today. Down at the store just some blocks from my house.”

Lucius gave his friend a worried glance out of the corner of his eye. “Really? And... are you okay?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely.” Severus was looking rather smug, and Lucius frowned.

“How come?”
Severus shrugged. “Let’s just say that I finally got evidence that there is some justice in the world, after all.” He told him of the encounter, and Lucius listened with his eyebrows slightly raised.

“You’re one nasty piece of work, Severus,” he finally said, receiving yet another shrug from his friend.

“You get back in whatever ways you can. And maybe it’s petty of me, but everyone acts petty from time to time. It’s part of the great many charms of mankind.”

Lucius didn’t say anything, but Severus could feel his disapproval nonetheless. This bothered him more than he wanted to admit, and so he said nothing about it. He changed subject instead, and Lucius seemed relieved. And to his great annoyance Severus found that Lucius had just somewhat spoiled the pleasure he had received at finally getting back at one of his schooldays’ tormentors.