#I'm on team short Sev for the sake of comedic potential.

[momo-t-daye]

Earlier today I saw a post by @somesnapefan2 in which was the phrase: “I dont mind short severus but tall”, which I thought was rather funny set of words. So, a very quick and messy comic of short Severus being tall (not exactly a follow-up from my previous comic because that’s a good deal more than seven inches of extra height unless you’re using abnormally large inches!).

[momo-t-daye]

Consequences had always been things that happened to other people.

Oh, Sirius had had his fair share of detentions (but he and James could make detention more entertaining than their initial shenanigans) and screaming matches with his mother (even if he couldn’t win those, he could at least make sure that Walburga lost); but those were just things that happened, those weren’t really his fault.  He wasn’t prepared for consequences, he wasn’t prepared for any fallout, he hadn’t thought of anything past his plan to make Severus Snape go away.

He hadn’t expected Remus to be so upset.  Remus wasn’t willing to talk to him, Remus wasn’t even willing to look at him!  Remus was acting more like a martyr than a marauder.

He had expected Snape to be scared, he’d wanted Snape to be scared, getting Snivellus to go away was the whole point of it all, and scaring Sniv off was what success looked like.  Watching Sniv skitter around corners, go quiet in the classroom, and fold in on himself— that was a victory, right?

He hadn’t expected James to be so angry.  He couldn’t understand why James was so angry.  James had never been angry at him before.  Not really angry.  Not angry enough to stop talking.

He had expected Dumbledore to be disappointed, Headmaster Dumbledore was an authority figure and he was very good at disappointing authority figures.  But, even while disappointed with Sirius, Dumbledore had made sure to protect Remus, so it really should be all right (Remus shouldn’t be upset, James shouldn’t be angry, Peter shouldn’t be the only one of them willing to pass the salt or say good morning).

He hadn’t expected Narcissa to seek him out while he moped along the corridors in baffling solitude after a lonely lunch, to take his arm and guide him off to a quiet hallway soaked in dusty sunlight.  He hadn’t expected her to say that she understood him, that dear Aunt Wally would be so very proud of him for his efforts to maintain and uphold the natural hierarchy, but (over his spluttering protests), that he really needed to pick a different half-blood to torment because Severus Snape was her pet project and she would be so dreadfully put out if anything ghastly happened to that boy.

She knew he knew about pet projects, she said with a pretty little smile, what, with Remus Lupin.

The bottom had dropped out of Sirius’ world as his cousin, with her pretty doll face benign and benevolent, began to insinuate a picture of a future he hadn’t bothered to imagine, a future he hadn’t expected.

Severus hadn’t told her about Remus Lupin, she said before his accusations could fly.  He’d thought Dumbledore had fixed things, that it really was going to be all right, that Snape wouldn’t, couldn’t— !

No, Severus had been reticent, almost recalcitrant.

But Remus Lupin had confessed when Lily Evans asked.  Remus Lupin had been ready to crack, absolutely bursting with guilt and boiling with grief.  Why, Narcissa hadn’t needed to do anything beyond pointing dear Lily in the right direction.  

So now she knew about Remus Lupin.

She surmised that Dumbledore knew about Remus Lupin, particularly given Sirius’ blithe attitude (wasn’t it amazing how fast that could evaporate?), but, she wondered innocently, did the Board of Governors know about Remus Lupin?  Goodness, did the editors at the Daily Prophet know about Remus Lupin?

Her tone was so solicitous and soothing that it made Sirius sick to his stomach. 

Certain pertinent information was readily available to anyone that could access and peruse the Lycanthrope Registry.  Did Sirius remember that Bella’s former roommate, the surviving one that hadn’t run off to another continent before graduation, Rita (what a gem) was trying to establish herself as a full-time contributor to the Daily Prophet?

“You can’t,” he’d said, his mouth dry and his throat tight with terror.  “Cissy, you can’t tell.”

“Oh, Siri,” she’d sighed and he couldn’t tell whether she was bemused or amused.  “You’re wrong.  I can, I can tell whomever I so please.  The only question is whether I shall.”

Writing the right letter to the right person would be simple, Narcissa was little “Miss Missive”; but Narcissa wasn’t inclined to contact her darling papa or her dear sister’s former roommate about this little issue just yet.  There was still a chance Sirius could aid her in resolving this situation discreetly.

She didn’t particularly dislike Remus Lupin.  Even if she felt that introducing Sirius to those muggle velour tracksuits was completely unforgivable, she could admit that it wasn’t the sort of crime that really warranted death or Azkaban. Furthermore, while she didn’t particularly like Albus Dumbledore, she didn’t particularly loathe him either.  Even if Dumbledore was a bit of a political nuisance, she found that an eccentric headmaster rattling around the school could usefully produce a number of charming little anecdotes to sprinkle into her regular correspondence (Griselda Marchbanks, for one, thought Dumbledore stories were delightful).

Still, Remus Lupin and Albus Dumbledore were sacrifices she was willing to make if Sirius would not cooperate.

She was, primarily, concerned that setting off the chain of events that could lead to the imprisonment and/or execution of a classmate (and/or dangerous Dark creature) along with the Headmaster’s removal and replacement would be dreadfully disruptive; particularly since their O.W.L.s were coming up in a handful of months.

Severus was looking forward to taking the O.W.L.s and Narcissa had no wish to deprive him or to distract or detract from his experience.  Good marks on O.W.L.s could help when one’s blood hindered.  Unfortunately, death or dismemberment would make it very difficult for him to take his O.W.L.s.

She would go so far as to tolerate Severus being disgruntled about disrupted exams if Sirius offered her no other choice.

He’d thought Bella, with her habit of breaking all his favorite things when she was bored, was the scary cousin.  Prissy Cissy, with her pristine dresses and fussy golden curls done up with ribbons and porcelain doll face and her proclivity for keeping her hands clean and frivolous fondness for needlework and gossiping with the old ladies, had never frightened him.

Now Narcissa stood before him with a terrible little smile, unspooling a vision of a world in which she broke some of his favorite people for his imagination and he was frightened.  

He was trapped in a web of his own making, he would dance like a puppet on a string for her or she would take that string spun from his web and use it as a noose for Remus. It was all his fault, no wonder Remus and James were both furious.

“What do you want?”

She looked at him as though she couldn’t decide whether he was dense or only pretending to be obtuse.

Very carefully, as though talking to a small child or a senile auntie, she informed him that he was to leave Severus alone.

There would be no hexing in the hallways, no shoving on the stairs, no cursing in the classroom, no jinxing in the Great Hall.  He would no longer be permitted to torment, taunt, prank, or persecute Severus without risking her ire.  And, for goodness sake, Sirius was to cease and desist with that utterly appalling appellation they’d stuck on the poor boy.  It was juvenile and inelegant and dull.

She expected he would also enforce this new standard of behavior on cousin Jamie, that Pettigrew boy, and Remus Lupin.  That bit wouldn’t be terribly difficult for Sirius, she said, as Remus Lupin was all but born to wave the white flag at any pitfalls in his path, the Pettigrew boy was all too happy to mimic the manners and morals of the more magnetic personalities in his vicinity, and Lily Evans was having a little chat with Jamie about some possible futures right about now.

She trusted that she and Sirius understood one another.  It was so nice to have had this little chat, to finally have clear communication with her cousin.

Now she really needed to go find Severus and let him know that all was well, there was nothing to fear, that Sirius and his little cronies would behave from now on.  They would behave, wouldn’t they?

With a chaste kiss on his cheek and a half-maternal pat on his head, she departed and Sirius, shaken by the genteel menace, stumbled towards the Gryffindor tower.  He wanted to talk to James, he needed to talk to James.  He hoped James would talk to him.

He met Lily Evans on the stairs, she was cold with rage and her eyes were hard.

“Oh,” she said, “Narcissa found you.  Good.”

He froze as she swept past, red hair tied up with one of Narcissa’s embroidered ribbons.  Green velvet.  Very nice floral motif. Some sort of daffodil.

“Black!” She called up, as if in afterthought, “I expect Narcissa was rather too nice to you since you’re both family.  If anything happens to Sev, if you hurt him ever again, just know that I won’t be nice at all.”

It should’ve been laughable.  Lily Evans was just some middle-class muggleborn girl from some nowhere town.  Who cared if she was or wasn’t “nice”?

She didn’t have Walburga’s temper or Bella’s humor, she didn’t have Narcissa’s connections, she didn’t have a Gringotts vault, she didn’t have generations of magical knowledge to consult or a childhood home full of really nasty curses.  Yet she looked prepared to lay a flock of geas upon him.

“Fine,” he said.  “I’ll lay off Sni—” her eyes were narrowed and his tongue bent towards an unfamiliar articulation, “—aaape.  Snape.”

He wondered, for a moment after she was gone, whether, or perhaps why, Cissy had given Evans that ribbon for her hair.

Remus’ bed curtains were shut and so were the curtains around James’ bed.  Peter was nowhere to be found and Sirius didn’t have the map (he suspected Remus had monopolized the map over the last week and was using it to avoid him).

James didn’t come to dinner and Remus moved to the other end of the long Gryffindor table with Peter trailing behind him as soon as Sirius sat down.  It was awful, and all the more awful when he noticed Snape watching him from across the Great Hall, flanked by Narcissa and Lily Evans, whispering to one another like sisters.

He hardly slept, he wanted to talk to James, or maybe Remus, or even Peter, but they had conspired to ignore him.  He was still awake when James slipped out of the room before the clocks had managed to find their way to six AM.

Quidditch practice, perhaps? 

Perhaps not, Otto Bagman wasn’t a fan of sunrises.

Sirius snuck out after James, if he could just corner James, just talk to James, just warn James, then maybe, maybe things could be all right.  If he could talk to James, then they could come up with a plan together, and maybe they could fix everything.

James wasn’t in the common room loo, where Sirius had expected to corner him while his pants were down and he wouldn’t run.

Instead, perhaps anticipating pursuit, James had gone out to the  sixth-floor bathroom.  It was early enough there wouldn’t be a swarm of first years competing for the one good shower.

James’ eyes were puffy and red-rimmed and his expression went stormy when he spotted Sirius in the mirror sidling up to the next sink.  He even went as far as to turn his back to Sirius and began to brush his teeth while perpendicular to the counter.

It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t awful, if Sirius didn’t suspect that James had been crying all night, if it wasn’t his fault for not thinking about the future beyond making Severus Snape go away.

There was a silent breach between them now that Sirius could not begin to broach.

 Perhaps because he was overwhelmed with angst as he washed his face for the third time in eight silent minutes, waiting for James to finish brushing his teeth, Sirius was caught unawares.  He couldn’t have expected Severus Snape to appear in the bathroom— the sixth-floor bathroom was well within Gryffindor territory and far from the depths of the dungeons where the Slytherins dwelt—, and wedge himself into the narrow gulf between Sirius and James’ silent back.  It would be utterly uncharacteristic of Severus Snape to place himself, isolated and vulnerable, in their power, it was the last thing Sirius could’ve expected.

But Snape was there, practically touching Sirius, practically touching James, intent on his own reflection as he drew dark lines around his eyes like he wanted to be some kind of wretched raccoon.

James nearly choked on his toothbrush, which was enough to convince Sirius that he wasn’t hallucinating Snape’s presence and bizarre behavior.

“Hmm?” Said the horrid little gremlin, “Did you say something, Black?  Potter?” And the question mark was shaped like a scorpion poised to strike.

“No-!” James said, all but frothing at the mouth, “No,” he said again, to Sirius this time. “Don’t.” It was the first thing he’d said directly to Sirius in the last several days. 

“No, nothing, uh, no,” Sirius agreed, desperate for James to keep talking to him.

“Ho ho,” Snape murmured, now focused on applying appallingly black lipstick to his thin smirk. “Indeed, indeed.  My, how the tables have turned!”

Then it hit Sirius like the wrath of the Whomping Willow: this was a test.

Narcissa, and Lily Evans perhaps, had established the boundaries of the new regime.  Now, Inspector Snape had arrived like a malicious ballerina with toes en pointe upon the very line that Sirius mustn’t cross.

Over Snape’s head, James was urgently trying to beg Sirius to hold his tongue without uttering a word himself and Sirius was earnestly trying to convey via pantomime that he understood and would be as mute as a swan.  

The wink, far more subtle than the semaphore, was a sadly limited method of communication, and neither James nor Sirius had ever learned sign language. 

Severus, with feigned disinterest in the pair desperately attempting, and failing, to spontaneously develop telepathy, produced a small onion from one pocket and a rather large kitchen knife from the other.  Then, with exaggerated care and precision, he cut the onion crosswise and appeared to savor the lachrymatory aroma.

Sirius and James froze, in a tableau of horror, as inky tears rolled down Snape’s smiling cheek.

“What the—?”  Sirius gasped, his own eyes watering as Snape, blinking rapidly, proceeded to store the onion halves in a jar and rinse his kitchen knife.

“It’s called fashion, Black,” Snape declared with manic cheer.

“Oh, uh, very, uh, very pretty…?” James offered weakly.

Sirius nodded along, despite knowing full well that the list of the season’s top looks did not include ‘sad nightmare clown’.  It was one thing to wear a fetching taxidermy koala on your head, but no one sensible wanted to go around looking like a miserable panda.

The unhinged lunatic, evidently satisfied with himself, smirked at the feeble compliments.  Sirius had never seen Snape look so happy as he did right then, waltzing out of the bathroom to get a start on Saturday.

“He’s gone mad with power, hasn’t he?” Sirius whispered.

“We’re doomed,” said James, and Sirius felt his heart swell with joy.

They were a ‘we’ once more.  They were friends again.

For James (and for Remus too, of course, of course), Sirius would endure ten thousand temptations from Severus Snape.