Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated characters and recognizable names belong to J K Rowling. Obviously they do not belong to me. If they did, I sure as heck wouldn't be posting stuff about them here.
The album Dark Side of the Moon is not mine, either – I'm not laying any claims to things that were dreamt up before I was born. DSotM belongs to Pink Floyd, geniuses of electronic music and mixing that they are, and this fic was greatly inspired by it. Strange that an album inspired by a crazy man so suits this story. Anyway, I'll keep lyrics-insertion at a minimum for the sake of those who are unfamiliar with the album – I know that there's nothing quite so annoying as lyrics you don't recognize inserted in a fic – but I do encourage you to pick up a copy of this album. You can find used copies up at ridiculously cheap, and it will be well worth your Time and Money...
AN: This is the first fic I've written in a while. I've been working on original stuff for months now, and this is a sort of congratulatory reprieve for me. It's more an idle amusement than anything, but I plan on finishing it, and that's a start.
dark side of the moon
a fic by Jean Farwig
It's pouring rain at the station. Hundreds of children ranging from age eleven to seventeen are milling about the platform beneath umbrellas and drycharms, accompanied by family and searching for their friends. The diversity is almost overwhelming. Here are the rich ones, the children born of old-money aristocrats; here are the underprivileged ones, carrying worn, secondhand books; here are robes of the finest fabric, here are shabby-looking uniforms, here are blue jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts.
It is almost time to leave. A mother is scolding her daughter for losing her gloves; a boy, too young to join the group on the train, is hugging his older sister good-bye; a young man, head covered with a heavy hood, is checking his watch. The smoke streaming from the train's chimney is mingling with the moisture in the air. It bites at the corners of their eyes, the smoke, and they can smell it, the sharp, bitter tang of coal. A whistle screams. It is time.
The children are rushing to the train now, scrambling for seats and waving out of every window they pass, saying good-bye to their loved ones for at least the next three months. These young ones are excited, and their heads are filled with memories of summer holiday, and they cannot wait to tell their friends all about it. They cluster together in the train compartments, forming cheerful, secure little clusters, noisy and bubbling with the pleasure of being back amongst their second family. They are content, despite the hard times the world is going through, and the furthest thing from their minds is the dark threat that seems to dominate the thoughts of everyone else. They know they are safe here, these young children, and they have not a care in the world.
But the older children are worried. It shows in their eyes, though not necessarily their actions. They know what is happening; they know what evil is menacing their idyllic world, and it lays heavily on their minds. They have read about the massacres, about the assassinations, and they all wonder who might be next, who might have fallen into ill favor with the evil whose name they dare not speak. They wonder as never before whether they are truly in safe hands, or whether the safety of the school that was always perceived before was not just an illusion to keep them docile and controllable. They have lost the innocence and absolute faith of childhood, and they sit there in their compartments doubtful and nervous and keeping up the cheerful façade as well as conscience will allow.
Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, and there are several in this case, in varying degrees of exceptionality. There is one who seems to have maintained that youthful innocence despite the adversity, and there is one who never had any innocence to begin with, and they are sitting on opposite ends of the train.
chapter one
"I don't see why you bother bringing that," James said frankly. "You know it's just going to quit once you get to Hogwarts."
"That's what you think," Lily said as she popped a cassette into the player. "This year it is my goal to adapt this thing so it'll run off magic. I did some reading up this summer and I don't think it'll be too difficult. In fact, I think it's going to be astonishingly simple, if my theory is correct." She smiled beatifically. "Now, if you don't mind, I am going to listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and there's nothing you can do, short of setting me on fire, to get my attention." She sighed happily and pressed a button. Her eyes fluttered closed, and a moment later James could hear a faint, tinny tune leaking through the headphones.
He snorted. "I bet we could think up something a little less pyromaniacal that would get her attention," he muttered to Sirius, who was sitting beside him. Sirius chuckled deviously, and Remus gave them a disapproving look from across the cabin.
"Don't you dare," he warned.
"We're not talking extreme, here, Remus," Sirius said cajolingly; "just a little mischief. No mayhem at all. We promise. Don't we, James?"
James nodded. "Wouldn't dream of it."
"Your mischief always turns into mayhem," Remus said. "At least wait until we're at Hogwarts."
"But we can't get points taken off us here," Sirius said.
"I can hear you, you know," Lily said, not bothering to open her eyes.
"Turn it up, then," Sirius said.
"Absolutely no mischief," Remus reiterated.
"My research shows that mischief is a perfectly acceptable form of dealing with stress," Sirius said. "Therefore I shall be getting into a lot of mischief this year to compensate for the hell that is sharing a house with my mother for two months."
Remus sighed. "Well, can you wait at least another..." He paused to examine his lunar watch. "...another five hours, give or take a quarter or so?"
Sirius affected a tone of long-suffering. "All right," he said, "I'll try, but I'm not putting anything in writing. I guess I'll try to content myself with some relatively innocent entertainment." He pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket. "Anybody up for Exploding Poker?"
"I don't think so," Remus said delicately. "I'm still nursing burns from last year."
"Sissy," said Sirius, and commenced a game of Combustible Go-Fish with Peter and James.
Or at least he appeared to have fallen asleep. His eyes were shut, his head was drooping, and judging by the pallor of his face and the dark hollows beneath his eyes, it would seem that this nap had been a long time in coming, and was exactly the thing that this boy needed.
However, he was not sleeping. He was quite awake, and had his few companions chosen to investigate, they would have discovered that he was not only awake but that he was as alert as an Auror that had just entered a danger zone. His hands, tucked beneath his arms, were trembling, not from the cold, as he wished them to believe, but with the tension of a deep and precise fury.
It was a righteous rage, and at the same time he knew it was singularly selfish; he had every right to this wrath, and absolutely no right at all. He tried to convince himself that the whole situation was simply ridiculous, but so far he was failing dismally. Or, rather, he was failing to earnestly believe that it was ridiculous, because though he knew it was, he felt the insult and the disappointment like a punch in the kidney.
It shouldn't have made him smile, the fact that the only wisdom his father had ever passed down to him concerned the family reputation and the keeping thereof. It did, though; it did make him smile, partly because of the irony of the situation, and partly because it meant that his father bothered enough to worry about the state of the family's reputation at all.
There weren't many things Severus found amusing, but hypocrisy to this extreme was one of them.
In any case, this year Achaicus Snape had neglected to give him that dour old order, and Severus felt resentfully bereft because of it. He made no attempt to reason with this rage; he knew very well that it had been silly to ever have grown to expect something from his father. He had thought that this was different, though, different because of the nature of the thing. Achaicus might not have cared about his son's well-being, but the family name was a different thing altogether. Despite the fact that it was sullied beyond repair already did not prevent the man from instructing his son not to tarnish it further while he was away at school; Severus could only imagine some personal sort of slight when Achaicus abandoned the tradition without word or warning.
Penelope had driven him to the station, not out of any sudden motherly urge but out of plain necessity. Both Mason, the butler, and Dewey, the chauffeur, had left the previous week without warning. Penelope's escort was a cold and silent as Dewey's had always been, and Severus, riding in the back seat, had felt as disappointed as he did relieved. She dropped him off at the station without ever having said a word, and once Severus had retrieved his trunk from the car and shut the boot, she drove off, leaving him standing in a blue swirl of car exhaust and rain.
Unceremoniously deserted, with his trunk standing on its end and his umbrella clenched in a white-knuckled grip, he had boarded the train in a cloud of burning resentment, snatching up the first empty compartment he found in hopes of having a few minutes to himself to quietly sit and seethe.
Eventually, he had been joined by a flock of first-years, all nervous and excited and too wound-up by far. It could have been worse, he had thought, but not by much; though when one of them bounced into the seat next to him and chirped inquiringly as to who he was and what house he was from, a good, ferocious scowl ensured that no more questions of that nature would be directed at him for the rest of the trip, at least not from these little ones.
And for several hours, all was peaceful. The children chattered incessantly and buoyantly but in unusually hushed tones - due to his brooding presence, no doubt - and only when the trolley-witch came around did one of them hesitantly poke him and ask him if he was hungry. Both annoyed and touched at the gesture, he shook his head and pretended to go back to sleep while the children traded copper and silver pieces with the witch in the corridor in exchange for sugar-loaded sweets and pastries that ensured they would be bouncing off the walls in an hour or so.
Something cold and cheerless moved in Severus's heart as he watched the new students, so full of exuberance. They seemed totally oblivious to the darkness that was swiftly encroaching the fringes of their world, as if their isolated soap bubble was impervious to such things. Severus reflected idly on his own childhood. He had been rooted in Dark soil from the start, from which he had crept like a reluctant, starving vine, always wanting more of something that he never got, or received just enough of to keep him alive. He wasn't sure what he had been lacking in, but whatever it was, these children certainly had it, and had it in abundance.
Severus decided he would rather be a jaded, withering vine that would last forever than an innocent, flowering bloom that would shrivel up and die as soon as the frost hit.
With this last defiant thought still echoing through his head, Severus let himself fall asleep.
It was dark by the time the train pulled into Hogwarts Station. Lily and the boys disembarked from the train, yawning and stretching their legs. They were pleased to note that it had stopped raining, though the stars weren't yet visible for the blanket of clouds. Lily joined a couple of girls from her dormitory and they clambered into one of the horseless carriages, and soon they found themselves in the Great Hall, taking their places at the long Gryffindor table, decorated lavishly with wreaths of red and gold cloth and set with the traditional golden cutlery.
Lily was happy to be back. The school was just as she remembered, with the clannish houses and the venerable professors and the terrified-looking first years. She wondered if she had looked that frightened at her own sorting. She couldn't remember. The good memories had clouded over that aspect of that particular recollection.
Headmaster Dumbledore, wearing his customary violet robes and drooping, pointed hat, welcomed them all, gave the few customary announcements, and invited them to eat. The feast magically blossomed over the table, and Lily tried not to gorge herself, but it was difficult not to get carried away. She was so pleased to be back, she could have enjoyed the meal over at the Slytherin table without much trouble.
All summer she had been fretful. Petunia had been distant, as usual, and she seemed to have come back from her school with a new set of friends, girls that Lily didn't know and Petunia didn't introduce her to. Mr Evans had been busy with work, and her mother kept insisting that she invite over some of her own school friends. Lily had had a difficult time convincing Mrs Evans that most of these friends lived hundreds of miles away, and the Evanses didn't have a fireplace to Floo with, anyway.
She had finished her holiday assignments within the first two weeks of being home, and the rest of the summer she had wandered about, extremely bored and impatient for something to happen. She had met some of her old Muggle school friends around the town, but things between them were awkward like it usually is with old acquaintances you've forgotten to keep up with or, as it was in Lily's guilty case, simply forgotten.
But now she was back, and she was convinced that everything was going to be perfect for the next nine months.