Felix did not read the journal all at once.
He read it in pieces — ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, whenever he could find a quiet hour in the Room of Requirement or a corner of the library where no one would look for him.
It was not a book that could be rushed.
It was a record of a boy growing up, written year by year in the same careful handwriting, and reading it all at once would have been like trying to swallow a river.
The first page was the letter he had already read.
The pages after that were different.
September 3rd, 1971
I have been at Hogwarts for two days.
I have not made any friends.
I have not spoken to anyone except the professors and the other first-years in my dormitory, and I have not spoken to them much.
I do not know how to talk to people.
I never have.
Mother says I am too quiet.
Father says I will grow out of it.
I do not think I will.
There is a boy in my dormitory named Severus Snape.
Felix stopped reading.
He read the line again.
There is a boy in my dormitory named Severus Snape.
He turned the page.
Severus does not talk to anyone either.
He sits on his bed and reads, and when the other boys try to talk to him, he ignores them.
They have started calling him names.
I do not know what the names mean, but I know they are not kind.
I have not said anything.
I do not know what to say.
Today he sat down next to me in the common room and asked me what I was reading.
I told him it was a book about ancient magical lineages.
He said it was boring.
I told him he was boring.
He laughed.
It was the first time I have heard him laugh.
Felix turned the page.
September 17th, 1971
Severus and I have been reading together every evening.
He is faster at Potions than I am.
I am faster at dueling than he is.
We have decided that this is a fair trade.
He will teach me Potions, and I will teach him dueling, and between the two of us, we will be able to do anything.
I have never had a friend before.
I do not think he has either.
We are both bad at it, but we are bad at it together, and that makes it easier.
October 4th, 1971
Someone put a dead rat in Severus’s bed last night.
I found him in the common room at two in the morning, sitting by the fire with his wand in his hand and his face very still.
He did not want to talk about it.
I sat down next to him anyway and did not say anything, and after a while, he stopped being angry, and we sat there until the fire went out.
I do not know who did it.
I do not know why they did it.
But I know that the next time someone does something like that to him, I will be there.
Not to protect him — he would hate that.
Just to be there.
November 22nd, 1971
Severus and I dueled for the first time today.
I won.
He was angry about it for about five minutes, and then he asked me to show him what I did, and then we practiced for three hours until he could do it too.
He is learning fast.
Faster than I expected.
He is not as strong as me, but he is smarter than me, and he uses his head, and I think that is going to matter more than strength in the end.
I am glad he is my friend.
December 1st, 1971
Severus told me something today.
He told me about a girl.
Her name is Lily.
Lily Evans.
She is in Gryffindor, in our year, and she is a Muggleborn, and Severus has known her since they were children.
He grew up in the same neighborhood as her.
He said she was the first person who was ever kind to him.
He did not say much after that.
He just said her name and then went quiet.
I did not push.
I do not push.
I think he is in love with her.
I do not think he knows it yet.
I do not think he would admit it if he did.
December 15th, 1971
Severus and I saw Lily in the corridor today.
She was with two other Gryffindors and she was laughing, and Severus stopped walking the moment he saw her, and I had to pull him into an empty classroom so no one would notice.
He did not say anything.
He just stood there with his back against the wall and his eyes on the door.
I asked him if he wanted to talk about it.
He said no.
So I did not talk about it.
But I stayed.
I always stay.
January 9th, 1972
Something happened today that I do not want to write about.
But I am going to write about it anyway, because I think I will need to remember it later. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
There is a group of older students.
Slytherins.
They have been bothering Severus for months.
They call him names, and they knock his books out of his hands, and they do things to his potions in class when the professor is not looking.
I have been ignoring it, because Severus told me to.
He said he could handle it.
He said he did not want me to get involved.
Today one of them pushed him down the stairs.
I did not think.
I just moved.
I got between them and I did not use my wand.
I used my hands.
I did not stop until a professor pulled me off, and by then two of the older students were on the ground and I had a black eye and a split lip and a detention for the rest of the month.
Severus was furious with me.
He said I was an idiot.
He said I could have been expelled.
He said he did not need me to fight his battles.
Then he sat down on the floor next to me in the hospital wing and did not leave until I was allowed to go back to the dormitory.
We have not talked about it since.
But something changed.
I do not know what.
He is my friend.
That is all that matters.
January 10th, 1972
I found a note in my journal today.
It was from Severus.
I am going to copy it here so I never lose it.
You are an idiot.
I told you not to get involved.
I am writing this because I do not know how to say it to your face.
I do not know how to say anything to your face.
I never have.
No one has ever stood up for me before.
Not once.
Not my father, not my mother, not the professors, not anyone.
I have been alone since the day I was born, and I have made peace with that, and then you came along and ruined it by being my friend.
I hate you for it.
I hate that you make me care.
I hate that when you got hurt, I sat in the hospital wing for six hours and did not move, and I did not know what to do with myself.
You are an idiot, and I am angry at you, and I do not know how to say any of this out loud, so I am writing it down and putting it in your stupid journal, where you will find it, because I know you read your journal every night before you go to sleep.
Do not do it again.
Do not get hurt on my account.
If you get hurt on my account again, I will never forgive you.
— S.
I am keeping this note.
I am not going to write about what it said.
I am just going to write that I read it.
And I am going to write that I am going to keep it forever.
Felix kept reading.
February 3rd, 1972
Severus has started calling me Soren.
Not Falker.
Not “the Falker boy.” Soren.
I have started calling him Severus.
Not Snape.
Not “the Snape boy.” Severus.
It feels different.
I do not know why.
March 15th, 1972
Severus told me something today.
About his family.
I am not going to write it down.
It is not mine to write.
But I am going to write that I understand now.
I understand why he is the way he is.
I understand why he does not trust people.
I understand why he pushes everyone away.
I am not going to push back.
I am just going to stay.
That is all I can do.
Just stay.
April 9th, 1972
We have decided that we are going to be the best Potions master and the best duelist of our generation.
Severus says he will be the Potions master.
I say I will be the duelist.
We have not decided who will be the best of the two of us.
We have decided to argue about that later, when we are older and have actually done something.
I like this plan.
It means we will know each other for a long time.
May 2nd, 1972
Severus told me something today that I think I already knew.
He told me he loves Lily Evans.
He did not say it like that.
He said it like a confession, the way you say something you have been holding onto for years and have finally decided to let go of.
He said he has loved her since he was nine years old.
He said she was the first person who ever looked at him like he was a person.
He said he does not know what to do with it.
He said he does not think she loves him back.
I did not tell him what I thought. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
What I thought is that she probably does not.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
But that is not what he needed to hear.
What he needed was for someone to listen.
So I listened.
I do not know how to help him.
I do not know if anyone can help him.
He loves her, and she does not love him, and there is nothing I can do about it.
All I can do is be here.
So I will be here.
July 17th, 1972
Something happened today.
Severus and I were walking through Hogsmeade, and we saw Lily in the street.
She was with a Gryffindor boy — James Potter.
I have never liked him.
Severus has never liked him.
He has been bothering Lily for years, and she has never given him the time of day, and today she was laughing at something he said.
Severus stopped walking.
I do not know what he was thinking.
I do not know what he was feeling.
He did not tell me.
He just stood there and watched them until they disappeared around a corner, and then he turned and walked the other way, and I followed him.
We did not talk for the rest of the day.
We did not talk for the rest of the week.
On the eighth day, he wrote me a note that just said: I am fine.
He is not fine.
I am not going to tell him that.
But I know it, and he knows I know it, and that is enough.
Felix turned the page.
The entries went on.
Years of them.
He read about their fourth year, when they started studying for O.W.L.s and Snape nearly drove himself mad trying to beat Lily in Potions.
He read about their fifth year, when the war started and older students began disappearing from the castle and nobody talked about where they went.
He read about James Potter and his friends — the Marauders, Soren called them, without affection — and the way they tormented Snape at every opportunity, and the way Snape refused to tell anyone.
He read about the summer before sixth year, when Lily stopped speaking to Snape.
Soren did not write about why.
He just wrote: Something happened between Severus and Lily.
He will not tell me what.
I have never seen him like this.
And then he reached the last entry.
It was dated December 1976.
December 12th, 1976
Severus and I had a fight.
It was about Lily.
It was always going to be about Lily.
He asked me to help him with something.
He asked me to do something that would have hurt her.
Not directly.
Not on purpose.
But it would have hurt her, and he knew it, and he asked me anyway.
I said no.
He said I was being unreasonable.
I said he was being unreasonable.
He said I did not understand what it was like to love someone who did not love me back.
I said I understood more than he thought.
We both said things we should not have said.
He left.
I did not stop him.
He has not written to me in three days.
I have not written to him.
I am not going to apologize.
He was wrong.
I know he was wrong.
But I am also not going to pretend I did not say what I said.
I am going to wait.
He will come back.
He always comes back.
That is how we work.
We fight, and we wait, and one of us writes, and the other one writes back, and then we do not talk about it again.
I miss him.
I am not going to tell him that.
But I miss him.
Felix set the journal down.
The last entry was written in December 1976 — twelve years before Felix had started Hogwarts.
And after that, there was nothing.
No entries.
No notes.
No letters.
The journal ended with Soren saying he missed his best friend and would not tell him.
Felix closed the journal and sat back in his chair.
He thought about the last entry.
He thought about the fight.
He thought about Lily Evans, and James Potter, and the way Snape had stopped walking in the street.
He thought about the way his father never talked about Snape, and the way Snape never talked about his father, and the way both of them carried something they would not name.
He opened the journal to the first page and started reading it again from the beginning.