Disclaimer: I am not J K Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following is set in an alternate universe, in which Severus Snape, whilst growing up in the Spinner's End district, has a girl his own age living next door to him, who he is friends with. This impacts his character, and some of his interactions with others. The narrative is from the point of view of Tracy Eagle, that girl who lives next door to the Snapes...

Tracy's mum was nothing if not intelligent and perceptive. She cornered her daughter in the living room of their home, the day after Severus Snape disappeared off to Hogwarts for his summer remedial classes.

"Men can be such bastards." Angela Eagle observed. "He's broken your heart, hasn't he?"

"It's not his fault, mum. The Evans girl's been one of his friends for a long time. I thought he'd broken up with her permanently, but by the sound of it, she did some pretty special things for him."

"And you haven't done some pretty special things for him, too?" Angela snorted. She surveyed her daughter. "I may prescribe a course of intensive shopping therapy next month, but for now I instruct the patient to sit with her mother on the settee and to indulge in a very large bar of chocolate. I have just such a thing for emergency situations like this, and almost everything seems better after good quality chocolate and a decent cry."

Several days after that Tracy was lying in bed one morning, sniffing and feeling generally under the weather, when it first happened. She wanted a tissue, to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, and – suddenly – the box of tissues shot across the room from the dressing table to land on the bed next to her hand.

She froze for a moment – and then, being practical, took a tissue and used it for the purpose for which she had wanted it. It seemed to be a genuine tissue, and therefore either she had just somehow forgotten getting out of bed, fetching the box, and getting back into bed and hallucinated the box flying through the air instead or…

It was ridiculous.

After drying her eyes, Tracy slowly got out of bed, and started to look through her cupboards for notes she had taken that summer Lily had blown up the garden shed next-door several times; Tracy and Severus had got through quite a bit of work, though, before Lily barged in and did her usual spoils-everything act.

Three quarters of an hour later, Tracy was downstairs, the spirit-burner, beakers, and various other things from her home chemistry set arranged in the outhouse. Her mother, who was at the computer working on her latest book, had raised an eyebrow on seeing her daughter march out to experiment, with such a determined expression on her face, but seemed relieved that she was actually doing something other than lying around, moping.

Swallowing back a slight feeling of nausea, Tracy consulted her notes, and added ingredients to the beaker on its tripod over the burner, carrying out the ridiculous seeming directions to the letter. Most of the stuff she was using were herbs from the kitchen, not regular chemicals.

She was pretty sure that the result would be the same as the dozens of times she'd tried this with Sev, and that nothing would happen.

But then, in front of her eyes, the impossible thing started to happen, as the murky solution in the beaker began to change colour and fizz slightly.

Tracy swore out loud and almost knocked it over. She stared, in disbelief, as the reaction completed, leaving the solution a delicate shade of pink.

She had just done something which should have been only possible with magic.

The only immediately obvious logical conclusion to draw from that made no kind of sense whatsoever.

Author Notes:

A couple of short scenes to wrap up. I did experiment with bringing Perenelle Flamel in as something other than foreshadowing that this was not going to be a completely happy ending, but it was too contrived and wouldn't fit in in the short time span left I wanted to cover. This story was about Tracy and Severus, and Severus has now left, so this story's over. Maybe Perenelle might feature if I write a follow-up about Tracy (and possibly her mum) without Severus...

To quote Tracy: '...The only immediately obvious logical conclusion to draw from that made no kind of sense whatsoever...' I'm reasonably certain that what I did here probably violates canon on how magic works in Harry Potter and is acquired, and so forth. There are a number of possible explanations, ranging from Tracy being a particularly late developer, to something involving what Voldemort would call 'old magic' (which is about sacrifice, and Tracy's made a pretty huge one here, letting Severus go for the sake of his happiness) to something else altogether. How credible any of those might actually be... well, eh, it's magic. (And I don't intend to commit myself to nail down a specific 'official' explanation for it right now.)

Thank you to all the readers and reviewers. I was rooting for Tracy too, but alas, this one turned out not to be that kind of story.