People always ask how I met my husband. Well, first they ask if they’ve heard his name correctly and where it comes from, and we generally confirm the spelling and remark that his family comes from an island somewhere in the North Atlantic. Friends in the know understand we are referring to England, but strangers think we mean some exotic locale.
After we clear up the inevitable “Severus, huh? Unusual name,” conversation, then they ask how we met, and this is when I get to say, “Oh we’ve known each other forever. We met when I was nine and moved in together when I was eleven.”
This, of course, while technically true, is an exaggeration of the facts calculated to make busybodies duck and cover - or flee very swiftly. Either way, it reduces the amount of time it takes to explain why the famous choreographer and former ballerina is married to someone so dour, and so old.
In truth, Severus only has six years on me, though the circumstances of his life have made the years weigh heavily upon him. But that’s another story.
I really was only nine years old when I met Severus, however.
I lived, for the first nine years of my life, with my parents in a small town at the head of the Carquinas Straights. It was a funky town, populated by leftover hippies who had given up their tie-dye and patchouli but kept their love of hand-made art. We were blessed with fair weather, most of the time, and a society of musicians, writers, and craftspeople who had no problem including a small number of witches and wizards among their number. Decades later, our town would be held up as the model of an integrated Muggle/Magical society, but for me, it was just home. It was safe enough for us kids to walk home from school, ride our bikes until the last rays of light were truly extinguished, and hang out at the homes of our teachers on weekends, with nary a thought that this might be inappropriate.
Of course, those of us from Magical families had a couple hours a week of extra classes, but it wasn’t enough to set us apart, really. In fact, only the subject matter made us any different from the kids who went to gymnastics or Hebrew school a couple of days a week.
By the time I was nine, my parents’ marriage was well on its way to dissolving into nothingness as often happens when people marry young without tasting the world. (They’d met, I’d been told, when my mother was on vacation in England, visiting her great-aunt, a formidable witch who lived next door to my father’s family. He’d served as her tour guide of Wizard London, and you can guess what happened next.) When the vitriol between them got so thick that I was releasing wild magic as a stress reaction, my father called an old friend of the family, took a job as the Professor of Ancient Runes at his alma mater, and packed me off to rural Scotland.
We arrived the day after Christmas, and we’d been there for less than a week, when I bumped into Severus. And I do mean bumped. I was late for lunch in the Great Hall, and was running down the corridor when I ran into a wall of unyielding black and landed on my backside on the cold flagstone floor.
“Watch where you’re going,” came the sullen grumble from above me. “That’s five points for running in the halls, and another five for crashing into a prefect.”
“Sorry,” I said from my position on the floor. “But…I don’t think you can take points from me.”
“Five more points for being annoying,” he said, and turned his head toward the four hourglasses full of colored gems, one for each house, where absolutely nothing happened. “Bloody first years. What’d you and your friends do to the glasses?”
“Nothing,” I said. “You just can’t take points from me.”
“Yes,” he said. “I can. Which House are you in?”
I looked down at my red and blue striped shirt that was just like the ones the kids on ZOOM wore, and then back up at him. “I’m not.” I said. “I just live here. My father teaches Ancient Runes.”
He blinked at me. One long slow blink that gave him time to process everything. “You’re Professor Foster’s daughter?”
“Yes,” I said. “Most people call me Elise.” I accented the first two words, as a hint, but he didn’t take it.
He stretched out his hand to haul me back to my feet and I took it. “Thank you,” I said. I looked at his badge, with the serpent on it. “You’re in Slytherin House?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “why?”
“I’m going to be in Slytherin someday. Dad says his Slytherin students are the most interesting, and I want to be interesting.”
“Your father was a Ravenclaw,” the boy told me.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Does that matter?”
“Sometimes.”
I opened my mouth to ask another question, but my father, apparently sensing my knack for getting into trouble, was approaching us from the other direction. “Elise,” he said, “you’re late.”
“So are you,” I pointed out.
My father laughed at me, “Yes, I suppose I am. Who’s your new friend?”
Severus turned to my father than, and introduced himself, “Severus Snape, sir. Slytherin, fifth year, prefect. Your daughter ran into me and fell. I was helping her up.”
I didn’t know why the boy was lying - well, he wasn’t really, but he wasn’t telling the truth entirely, either - but I know enough to understand than when it comes to adult vs. kid, kids have to stick together. Even if the adult is your father.
“I shouldn’t have been running,” I agreed amiably.
“No, Elise” my father said, “you shouldn’t. If classes were in session you could have run into a lot of people. He opened the door to the great hall and we followed him inside. “Did you apologize to Mr. Snape.”
“Yes.”
“All right then. No more running in the halls.” He patted my hair, and I knew there wouldn’t be trouble.
By the time we three made it to the table, there were only three seats left, and Uncle Albus was beckoning my father to the seat nearest him. I ended up between him and Severus, who, desperate not to talk to the groundskeeper who was in the next chair, asked me softly, “Why Slytherin?”
“Ravenclaw’s are smart,” I said, “but snooty. Gryffindors are all ‘rah rah, we’re so cool.’ Slytherins are kind of scary sometimes,” I met his eyes then so he knew I meant him, “but never boring. And I’d rather be scared than bored any day.”
What about Hufflepuff?” he asked me, as he passed the candied yams. “What about them?”
I thought about it, and finally said, “Harmless. I guess.”
He didn’t answer with words, but he did smile a little at my assessment, and even though my father then commanded my attention, I remembered that conversation for years, because it was the first time I saw Severus Snape smile.