I’m quite sure that shaving four days growth off in the bath, without the benefit of a mirror, was a risky business, the way my hands were shaking; whether as an aftermath of the alcohol I had consumed, or the fact that no matter where I laid my left arm the Dark Mark either watched me or sizzled angrily in the water, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know how to bear its presence for much longer, far less the rest of my life, and found myself panicked again.

I dressed quickly, in black trousers and a long-sleeved white silk shirt, almost surprised that when the mark was covered it seemed to still my terror, as though something as simple as putting it out of sight would also put it out of my mind. I towelled my still wet hair again, tied my cravat and pulled on my frock coat, buttoning it up with a flick of my wrist, confident enough of my spell not to check that the right buttons were in the right holes. I squared my shoulders, tried to quell the flood of trepidation that ran through me, and walked down the stairs, absently promising myself to listen to Ethel’s bidding and do something about the insipid green threadbare carpeting in the ugly little hall. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me at that time that she shouldn’t have ever seen the hall carpet. My mind’s rambling didn’t help me to forget that I had to face things though, and it was just as well Black was there, because I wasn’t doing that on my own.

I’m not sure what I expected when I pushed the door open, perhaps Ethel and Black having a cosy chat over tea and crumpets about secrets I didn’t know I had, or perhaps her picture still turned to the wall so that Black could rifle though my desk. What I didn’t expect was for him to be fast asleep with his legs drawn up onto one of my rather expensive old leather settees, my favourite of course, with his head thrown back so that his hair almost reached the floor. His mouth was wide open, and he was snoring his head off. I was only disappointed that he couldn’t see himself.

‘Did you do that?’ I asked Ethel, to where her picture was again facing into the room. She was pretending to prune some yellow roses.

‘Yes, dear, I didn’t think you wanted him poking around too much for now.’

I remember giving her a long look which she seemed to choose to ignore, finding something much more interesting in her roses.

‘If it is of any help, dear, I suspect he knows much more than you think. I suspect that is why he has come here,’ she said eventually, laying her secateurs into the trug she carried over her arm. ‘Now remember, Severus, when you are arguing and losing your temper and being difficult, that you need allies too.’ See seemed to have a large wardrobe at her disposal, and she dusted her hands off on the long brown skirt she then wore, and gave me another of her looks. ‘Shall I wake him?’ she asked.

I felt some kind of relief flood through me, not even knowing from what it stemmed. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Allow me.’

I crossed the room and put my hand over the open mouth, and watched with the first amusement I had felt for some while as the greyish-blue eyes flew open in momentary panic, and Black’s limbs thrashed in what seemed to be more directions than physically possible. Then he bit my hand.

‘You could have given me a fucking heart attack,’ he accused, as he sat upright and drew a hand across his face.

‘I know,’ I replied. ‘A petty revenge, but satisfying none the less.’

*****

I don’t know how we slipped into talking about what we needed to talk about, or perhaps I do, but every time I glared at Ethel she was either taking the seeds off lavender, or arranging flowers, or doing anything but catching my eye. Whatever it was, I felt a weight somehow shift off my chest when Black asked about the Dark Mark, as though he knew he had to broach it and that I couldn’t do that alone.

I shoved my shirtsleeve back, feigning irritation. ‘Happy now?’ I snarled. ‘This what you wanted to see?’

I watched him frown; he seemed to do that quite a lot. ‘It looks different from Reggie’s,’ he said.

‘It is different,’ I muttered, pulling my sleeve back down, as though to shut the thing from my life. ‘Who told you about it anyway?’

‘Riddle announced it, not long after you left actually. He seemed extremely pleased with himself, almost as pleased as Bella was with herself.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked, bridling again.

‘Your engagement was the second announcement of the evening; in fact I was surprised to find you alone today,’ Black replied.

‘My engagement?’ I snarled through gritted teeth, Black’s stifled amusement more irritating to me than his outright ridicule would have been. ‘What engagement?’

‘To Bellatrix, of course. She and Tom Riddle made it quite clear that you and she were to be married.’

‘Where the fuck did they think I was?’ I gaped at Black, quite at a loss as to how to explain the obvious to him. ‘Don’t they think I would have hung around for the rest of the evening?’

‘So you’re not engaged?’ Black said with some degree of open amusement. ‘I confess I was a little puzzled at her insistence. Although it does seem that Tom is quite keen on the union, and as Bella is one of his favourites it might be difficult for you to back out, Severus.’

‘Back out? What on earth are you talking about? I don’t require to back out of anything I’m not in,’ I snapped. ‘And if Bellatrix is such a favourite of Riddle’s, let me be the first to assure him that I, for one, shall not stand in his way.’

‘You’re going to have to do something about it, Snape,’ Black reasoned. ‘In fact Reggie said that Riddle was furious with Lucius for not being able to find you this last couple of days.’

‘Lucius knows where I live,’ I remarked, and found myself glancing to where Ethel was fussing with a lilac bush which didn’t need fussed with. ‘Have you been hiding this house from people who know how to find it?’ I asked her, as suspicion crept belatedly over me.

‘I’m sure the house can hide itself when it wants to, without any help from me, dear,’ she replied. ‘Anyway, you weren’t really in a fit state to see Lucius or the awful women he brought with him.’

‘Women?’ I asked, rather more faintly than I would have liked.

‘Yes, a fair-haired shrew and black-haired harridan who thinks she is far more beautiful than she actually is,’ Ethel replied. ‘Actually, she’s a bit like Sirius Black here, but without the beard and moustache, and with darker hair. They both sounded a touch shrill with Lucius when he couldn’t find you.’

‘And it just slipped your mind to mention this?’ I asked. ‘When did they call?’

‘Oh, several times,’ she replied with her usual air of unconcern. ‘In fact three times with the women, and once Lucius came on his own, just a half hour ago, while you were bathing.’

‘Has anyone else called?’ I asked her coolly.

‘Apart from Sirius here, no, dear. Were you expecting anyone else?’ she replied.

‘Why did you let him in?’ I asked, refusing to be sidetracked by any of her nonsense about the house hiding itself, and nodding to where Black sat with another of his confused frowns on his face. I had to keep reminding myself that Ethel was a mistress at giving indirect answers.

‘Oh, don’t be tedious, Severus dear,’ she chided me. ‘You’ve all but lost the thread of what you were talking about with inconsequentialities. It’s a failing of yours, to try to cover the more important issues with minor ones.’ She turned to Sirius, and it was only then that I noticed she was no longer in the picture and had joined us in the room again. I was finding her changing planes of existence rather disconcerting.

‘Now, Sirius dear,’ she said, sitting herself down in the spindly chair which had reappeared too. ‘Don’t you think you should get on with it. You’re every bit as bad as Severus when it comes to procrastination.’

‘I’m trying to get around to it,’ he replied.

‘Around to what?’ I asked.

‘The bee, Severus dear,’ Ethel replied for him. ‘He really came here because the bee wants to speak to you.’ She looked towards the window, to where a large bumblebee was tapping gently against it, as though being wafted into the glass every now and again by a summer breeze.

I know I groaned. I suppose when one associates a word with someone or something for a long time that it loses its other meanings, and it took me a moment to remember that Dumbledore was Old English for bumblebee, and all the connotations that thought brought with it. Of course he would be Animagus; aren’t they all, the damn Gryffindors? That apart, he was one of the last people I wanted to see, if I discounted Tom Riddle, Lucius, and the awful Bellatrix Black. But Sirius had stood up, and was opening the window, and the man himself materialised in my living room, all dusty grey robes, and grey velvet slippers, and smelling of sherbet ruddy lemons. I had never seen him looking so grave.

He nodded to Black, gave me a long look, and surprised me by turning to Ethel, who had removed herself to her picture. ‘And just where do you fit in here, Emeline?’ he asked.

‘Ethel, dear,’ she replied, giving him a hard look, one I hadn’t seen before.

‘Hmm,’ Dumbledore remarked. ‘What happened to Emeline Thoracity Helewys Elizabeatha Lavinia? Did you lose a bit somewhere along the line?’

‘I shortened it to the initials, Albus,’ she replied, as though it shouldn’t matter any more to him than it mattered to her. ‘I had thought that you were going to be a bright boy, an interfering busybody, but a bright one. Seems I was only partly right.’

‘Do you two know one another?’ It was Black who asked the obvious question that I hadn’t wanted to ask.

‘Yes, of course we do,’ Dumbledore replied.

I was standing back at that point, as though I were just the audience in a play that was being acted out on my behalf. I certainly didn’t want to venture any remark that would make me appear to be as foolish as I felt. I had had an uneasy relationship with Dumbledore as a schoolboy, often feeling that he had some sort of expectation of me that I didn’t understand, and yet he was as unmistakably Gryffindor as James Potter, and of course, the man who now stood between us like some sort of hesitant referee. I remember sensing disappointment in Dumbledore, the older I got, as the Dark Forces gathered strength around us, and news and politics seeped into even our cloistered world, poisoning those of a naturally evil bent, and sweeping along those too weak to resist. As I reached my fifth year I turned to the dubious friendships of boys like Avery and Mulciber, small-minded fools that they were, in an attempt to gain whatever knowledge I could of what was happening around me; after all, the news coming out of Spinner’s End only centred around my parents’ wishes that I find somewhere else to stay over summer. Of course, those around me took that to mean that I was fascinated by the Dark Forces for entirely different reasons than educating myself about what I considered to be, not only my enemy, but the enemy of the few things I held dear: the two things I held dear to be precise, Lily Evans and Andromeda Black.

But I was alone, I had no real friends; Andromeda had left Hogwarts, my relationship with Lily had soured at that time, and even Lucius had moved on, and I was left with powerful enemies who should not have been, and ill-chosen friends who weren’t. In some sort of self-defence, against I knew not what, I tightened the cloak of hostility I had taken to wearing, and let them all make of me what they would. However, even I was surprised at being offered to a werewolf by none other than Sirius Black, and in some way that jolted me to the understanding that I had cast my own role in the eyes of others, and although even now I was reluctant to admit it, they were those who mattered.

‘But … she’s Severus’s aunt,’ Black said to Dumbledore, clearly as bemused as I felt. ‘She said so,’ he added, turning to me in what looked like mild accusation. ‘He did too.’

‘She’s everyone’s aunt,’ Dumbledore replied, addressing me more than Black, ‘in a vague sort of way. When you’ve been around as long as she has, there’s a good chance your blood runs in everyone’s veins. But I find myself wondering, Severus, why you have a photograph of Emeline Thoracity Helewys Elizabeatha Lavinia Gryffindor, considering she died when photography, even in the Muggle world, was in its infancy.’

‘Gryffindor?’ I echoed, ignoring the difficult question, and turning to the picture. ‘Are you a true descendant of Godric Gryffindor?’ I asked, without making the leap to realising that I would also be such a descendant if that were true.

‘Not quite, dear,’ Ethel replied vaguely.

‘But you are a Gryffindor?’ Black put in, and though laying claim to some part of her.

‘I married a Gryffindor,’ she replied.

I’m not sure how I made the leap to understanding, but I thought then the look Dumbledore exchanged with the photograph might have had something to do with it, more likely it was one of the things Ethel and I had discussed, the first of many facts that I couldn’t have known, but found that I did. ‘What was your maiden name?’ I asked in a voice I didn’t really recognise as my own, then suddenly wished I hadn’t, because I had already become aware that whilst she was confirming she had been Godric Gryffindor’s wife, she was also Salazar Slytherin’s sister. And something else occurred to me too: something menacing, ugly, a memory of Tom Riddle saying, ‘We are the same.’

*****