Disclaimer: I am not J K Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter. I am not Leslie Charteris. I do not own The Saint.

Note: Technically this story continues to be back-story for the Severus Snape who appears in 'Saint Potter'. This material is alternate universe.

The summer of 1972 saw Severus finally able to get back home and to start frequenting the local library again. Hogwarts, being a school of witchcraft and wizardry, didn't generally concern itself with the doings of muggles, or at least not unless said muggles had been 'persecuting' witches and wizards; the Hogwarts library certainly featured a complete absence of muggle newspapers, either current or historic.

Rather annoyingly, Severus' mother didn't appear to have abandoned her efforts to get him to try to be friends with the younger Evans girl, resuming her annoying habit of childminding both the girls at every possible opportunity, and insisting on Severus 'staying home to help with our guests' on such occasions. The older girl, Petunia, Severus was prepared to continue to be agreeable to – she did at least make some attempt to behave as Severus conceived that a girl ought to do – but Lily continued to be annoying, and he had just had an entire school year of her trying to mess up his potions classes which it was difficult to overlook. Severus was aware that it was possible for some unconventional females to be good to have around – Patricia Holm, a woman who had often been seen in Simon Templar's company before the second world war, had by all the accounts he had read definitely been such a person – but the one occasion that Severus, annoyed by Lily's attempts not-to-be-ladylike, had asked her 'if you had a gun, and there was a bad man chasing you, where would you shoot him?' she had looked horrified and shut up for the next couple of hours. Clearly, although Lily was refusing to behave as girls were supposed to do, she certainly wasn't cut out 'To Be Useful in An Adventure'.

Severus would have liked to have contacted Cynthia over the summer, but apparently the Davenports had arranged to go on a tour of Asia over the summer, in a mixture of holiday and business (buying timber supplies for furniture making), and she'd told him not to attempt to write.

Author Notes: (subject to update)

A very short chapter. It just didn't seem logical to 'lump' it in with the next school year.

Yes, Lily's a Gryffindor, and has been trying to get Severus' attention for the past school year, but at the age of twelve she hasn't really thought much about the way the adult world might work and can't cope with the idea of maybe having to use force to respond to a threat.

Severus is perhaps a touch naïve in his own view that females ought to fall into the categories of either 'ladies' or 'Patricia Holm'. (And would almost certainly get confused himself, if asked how he thought of his friend Cynthia; he'd probably say something like 'well she's a friend, so it doesn't matter'.)