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Just as Damien was gleefully tormenting Severus’s fragile heart, the creak of a door opening sounded from behind them, followed by a cool voice:
“Severus, I don’t recall ever teaching you to shout a guest’s name inside the house.”
The color drained from Severus’s face.
In the next instant, his expression smoothed over, and he turned stiffly to face his mother.
Seeing her, Damien hastily abandoned his emotional interrogation of Severus.
He straightened his robes, adjusted his posture, and offered Severus’s mother, Mrs.
Prince, a flawless wizarding bow.
“Good day, esteemed Mrs.
Prince.
I’m a friend of your son, Severus.
My name is Damien—Damien McGonagall—and I also come from a wizarding family.
Please forgive me for visiting without sending word in advance.”
In that moment, the mischievous friend Damien vanished, replaced by a man whose two lifetimes added up to forty-three years—steady, composed, and fully in control.
Severus turned, startled by the transformation.
His usual calm cracked under the impact of Damien’s sudden elegance.
Because of that, he completely missed the flicker of approval in his mother’s eyes as she regarded Damien.
Slytherin had always valued aristocratic poise and grace.
Faced with Damien’s polished manners, the sharp appraisal in Mrs.
Prince’s gaze softened.
She shot her own son a sidelong look, clearly unimpressed by how far short he fell of that standard.
Her eyes paused for several long seconds on Severus’s lank, greasy hair.
Her expression grew even more dissatisfied.
She must have been drunk back then, to fall for a Muggle and trail after him to this shabby, backward little town.
Looking back on it now, she could only think she’d been completely out of her mind.
If she’d married into a proper wizarding family, then her child would surely be as poised and courteous as Damien.
Lost in this tangle of regret and fantasy, Mrs.
Prince let a rare, gentle smile soften her features—one Severus hardly ever saw—as she turned to Damien.
“Good day, Mr.
McGonagall.
I’m honoured that Severus has finally made a true friend.
I believe he’ll be able to learn much from you.”
Severus stared, baffled.
Was this polite, well-mannered boy in front of his mother really the same Damien who mocked him about Lily every time they met?
The contrast was staggering.
Watching her son stand there in sullen silence, Mrs.
Prince’s displeasure grew.
Her voice sharpened slightly as she prompted him:
“Sev, aren’t you going to introduce your friend to me?”
Only then did Severus dare to speak.
He muttered an introduction, then led Damien into the living room.
Damien stepped in from the narrow entryway, and his first impression was that the room was suffocating.
One small window struggled to let in any light.
The walls were crammed floor to ceiling with magical texts, closing in from every side.
The only two doors to the rest of the house were hidden within the bookshelves.
It didn’t feel like a home at all—more like a cramped cell.
Of course, Damien didn’t let any of that show.
He slipped on the well-practiced smile from his previous life, settled into his role, and chatted easily with Mrs.
Prince, fielding every one of her questions with smooth, measured answers.
After about ten minutes of conversation, Mrs.
Prince’s long-dormant curiosity seemed to awaken under Damien’s effortless eloquence.
In a lull between topics, she suddenly realized she had forgotten to offer tea and snacks.
She stood at once, looking faintly apologetic, and hurriedly said to Severus, “Sev, look after your friend properly.
I’ll go and make some tea.”
Once Mrs.
Prince had left the room, Severus seemed to snap out of a trance.
He pointed at Damien, stammering:
“Damien… you just now… you…”
Damien arched a brow at him.
“Sorry, Severus.
I’m already a despicable adult.”
That familiar, flippant tone yanked Severus straight back to reality.
At once he felt an urge to expose Damien’s true colors to his mother, if only so he wouldn’t have to endure another lecture after this boy left.
But Damien drifted up behind him like a ghost and murmured in his ear:
Prince won’t lecture you if she sees what I’m actually like?
No—she’ll just say you don’t even know how to put on an act.
‘Sev, you’re hopeless.’ Once I’m gone, you’ll definitely be in for it.
You’d better beg me to stay a bit longer.
Maybe if I keep her happy, you can dodge that lecture.”
Severus froze, his expression cycling through colors like a dye shop.
After a long moment, he managed to twist his face into something like a smile and forced out, between clenched teeth.
“Then please stay my true friend!”
Damien, lounging opposite him, only widened that infuriatingly cheeky grin.
“It’s fine.
Who else but friends would do this?
I just love helping friends.”
By the time Mrs.
Prince had finished rummaging through the cupboards and unearthed the last tin of stale tea in the house, her son in the living room had already been coerced into signing a humiliating treaty.
So when she returned with the tea and a small plate of snacks, she was greeted by the sight of her good-for-nothing son with a magic book in hand, apparently immersed in the ocean of knowledge alongside that “excellent” friend.
Relief warmed Mrs.
Prince’s chest.
She softened her steps, quietly set the tea down on the side table, took in the sight of the two absorbed boys, and then slipped back downstairs to brew potions.
Once Mrs.
Prince went downstairs, Damien exhaled in relief, as if he’d just been granted a full pardon.
He had to admit, Mrs.
Prince’s manner wasn’t any different from the way Snape taught as an adult—her presence pressed down on you like a weight.
With a mother that overbearing, it was no wonder Severus’s childhood had felt like suffocating under a wet blanket.
Severus, though, had no intention of chatting.
He sat beside Damien, completely absorbed in the book in his hands, turning pages with steady focus.
After sneaking a few glances, Damien realized he wasn’t just pretending—Snape was actually reading.
Damien lowered his head and took a proper look at the title: Understanding His Brain—Sixteen Applications of Imperio.
Honestly, this was miles beyond their year’s curriculum.
Harry Potter wouldn’t have touched something like this until after graduation—if he’d actually graduated.
Oh, right.
Harry ran off before that.
So that tracked.
Damien couldn’t help recalling how Sirius Black had once described Severus to Harry.
“When he first entered school, he knew more Dark Arts than many seventh-year students.”
So Sirius hadn’t just been demonizing Snape—he’d been telling the truth.
And it did make sense.
If Severus hadn’t started on the Dark Arts so early, he’d never have survived seven years of “righteous” four-on-one bullying from James, Sirius, and the rest.
Damien watched Severus’s intent expression, then shook his head and got to his feet.
He drifted along the shelves, reading the spines one by one: Secrets of the Darkest Art, Powerful Potions, A Comprehensive Guide to Asian Anti-Venoms, Enjoy Your Revelry in a Bottle…
Row after row of Dark Arts and Potions.
No wonder Severus’s greatest achievements in the future would be in exactly these two fields.
Damien sighed inwardly.
He turned back to Snape, still buried in his book, and something in his chest stirred.
Severus had once believed his life would end on some drunken night of his father’s.
He pictured himself lying boneless on the floor, his own blood spreading beneath him, while his mother watched in silence from the side.
That bleak, hopeless vision shattered when he was seven years old.
That day, his father had been drinking again.
He kicked open the door and, as casually as always, hurled an empty bottle at him—a routine ever since he’d been sacked from the steel mill.
But this time, Severus stared at the bottle and, with all his will, wished it would stop and not hit him.
And then a miracle happened.
The bottle froze in mid-air.
The young Severus had no idea what that meant.
His mother—who usually stayed silent all year round and let his father rage unchecked—wordlessly reached into a hidden compartment in the bookshelf and drew out a wooden stick.
She raised it, eyes wide, and muttered an incantation in a stiff, halting voice, each syllable sounding like it was being forced out between clenched teeth.
His father’s gaze slowly went dull, as though a grey film had slid over his eyes.
Then he turned around, walked out the door—and never came back.
After that day, it was as if all the strength had drained from his mother.
She locked herself inside the basement for three full days.
Outside that tightly shut door, Severus, left alone in the quiet house, felt the existence of magic for the first time.
From then on, he understood: in this world there was one kind of person called a wizard, born with extraordinary gifts, like his mother.
And another kind called a Muggle, blind to the greatness of magic and living mean, small lives, like his father.
His mother told him that one day he would go to a magic school called Hogwarts.
There, he must do everything he could to enter the only noble house, proud of its pure blood, and stay away from Muggles—he must join Slytherin.
Only by distancing himself from those lowly people could his talents truly flourish.
By the time he was seven, Severus had stopped going to school altogether.
He stayed at home, trailing after his mother, starting from the most basic magic primers and working his way through them page by page on his own.
Eileen transformed the old storage room into their own little Chamber of Secrets, hiding the door behind stacks of bookcases and tottering piles of volumes.
From then on, their days settled into a quiet rhythm of potion brewing, cauldrons simmering from morning till night. Get faster updates on g.com.
When Severus finally finished One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, the job of preparing ingredients—washing, chopping, sorting—was slowly handed over to him.
He thought this would be his life from then on: a dull, steady routine until the day he left Spinner’s End behind for good, escaping the Muggle world he despised.
But fate opened another door.
Just two streets east of Spinner’s End, in an ordinary Muggle household, a red‑haired girl with hair like a living flame crashed into his world.
As a child, Severus didn’t understand why he couldn’t keep away from this Muggle girl.
Every time he tried to avoid her, an odd emptiness opened in his chest.
So, outside his monotonous days of studying magic, he began spending time with Lily, wandering with her through the streets and back alleys of Cokeworth.
He knew Lily had an older sister, but he always steered clear of her.
To him, that girl with the thin, crane-like neck, bony knuckles, and almost no resemblance to Lily was exactly what a Muggle ought to look like—a perfect example of the kind of person a gifted wizard like him should avoid.
Yet fate never did bother with his preferences.
Just as he was clinging to his pride and setting his sights on Slytherin, Damien appeared—bringing along that ever‑smiling Remus—and the two of them simply walked into his life.
Remus fit nearly all of Severus’s expectations for a wizarding child: well‑read, diligent, and gifted in a dozen small, startling ways.
Damien, however, was…odd.
He knew an astonishing amount, yet never boasted; instead, he took the silliest things with baffling seriousness.
He clearly came from a noble family—his aunt was even a Hogwarts professor—yet he showed not the slightest trace of disdain for Muggles.
He…
Severus couldn’t understand why Damien seemed so at odds with the wizarding world his mother had described.
But when he followed Damien, and the five of them played together in the little park in Cokeworth, Petunia suddenly didn’t seem quite as lowly as he’d imagined.
He was still very young, and he didn’t know why the whole world seemed to tilt and change whenever Damien was around.
He only knew that the feeling was…rather pleasant.
So on the last day of summer holiday, when Damien and Remus burst into Spinner’s End to drag him out, he only put up a token protest, grumbling for a few moments before letting himself be taken away.
Later, he would regret that.
On a patch of trampled grass, more than a dozen Muggle children were running about, and Severus’s face took on a faintly green tinge at the sight of so many Muggles in one place.
But Lily and Petunia were sitting on the sidelines, and Lily was even waving and cheering for him.
He forced his thoughts under control and managed a stiff smile in her direction.
He turned to Damien, frowning.
“So…what are we doing?”
“Football,” Damien said.
“Muggle entertainment.
It’s very simple.
Just remember: you can only touch the ball with your feet, and you have to kick it into the goal with the net on the other side.”
Next to them, a brown‑haired Muggle boy gave him a slightly fawning grin.
“Please, mate, we’re really short on people.
Don’t worry, just run with us, it’s easy.”
Before Severus could reply, Remus had already grabbed his hand and hauled him onto the field.
Even as he ran, the bundle of energy was shouting:
“I’ll take him for two laps and he’ll get it, let’s just start!
Today we’re going to beat them seven–nil!”
The Muggle boys on the opposite side roared in outrage at the challenge.
Severus glanced back at them, then turned to Remus with a blank expression.
“So,” he said dryly, “did you have to provoke them?”
“Mate, this is football, this is competition.
If you’re going to play, you play against the best—otherwise, what’s the point!”
Remus, carefree and laughing, didn’t bother arguing.
He simply flung his arms wide and sprinted across the green pitch, soaking in the moment.
Behind him, Damien and Oliver had already charged forward with the others.
One by one, the boys clapped Severus lightly on the back as they passed, and, almost without realising it, Severus found himself breaking into a run alongside them.
Warm Cokeworth sunlight spilled across his shoulders.
The smell of fresh grass filled the air.
Side by side with Remus, Severus ran across the field.
A strange confusion stirred in his chest.
He glanced at the Muggle boys pounding along beside him.
Their faces weren’t stupid or base, as he’d always pictured.
Their cheeks were flushed from exertion, just like his.
He thought, ‘They don’t seem any different from me.
Or from Remus.
Or from Damien.’
The realisation unsettled him, but the steady warmth of the sun eased the tightness in his heart.
He shook his head, pushed the thought aside, and threw himself fully into chasing the black-and-white football.
On the sidelines, Lily and Petunia were calling out their names.
Severus kept his eyes on the ball, but when Lily’s voice rang out, he lifted his head and flashed her a bright, unguarded smile.
Petunia, catching the look, leaned toward her sister and murmured, “Severus looks much more comfortable today.”
Lily tilted her head, puzzled.
“What do you mean, sister?”
“Nothing.
You’ve always found him pleasant to look at anyway.”
“Petunia!”
Under the clear sky, the children’s lives quietly took a different turn.