THE PROMISE – CHAPTER 2

THE PROMISE – CHAPTER 2

AGAIN, SOME NOTES FROM THIS AUTHOR ARE REQUIRED.
IN FACT, I JUST COULDN’T HELP IT…
HERE THEY ARE:

1. Ingeram and Corvinus are both forms to say “raven”, in Irish and in Roman Latin. It has a lot to do with the character. It’s that “names’ thing”, again…
2. My version of Snape is a bit closer than we can find in the books, and therefore more psychotic. Beware.
3. Things are kind of starting to kick by now. Hope you enjoy it.


CHAPTER 2 – THE BOY WHO DID NOT APPARENTLY DIE, AGAINST ALL ODDS

The first memory of the boy was his mother’s green eyes.
She had long auburn hair, a heart-warming smile and smelled like lilies.
That figures – her name was Lily. Lily Potter.
He had glimpses of his father - up and down his arms, playing, laughing, almost touching the sky, almost reaching for the face with the speckles and the open, honest smile. His name was James Potter.
Then, it came the rainy night and the green light. Nothing but flashes and frightening noises.
Finally, some black truthful eyes looking at him very closely, and a warm and protecting lap. Those eyes were his adoptive father’s, Severus Snape.
All these events happened almost ten years ago. He was just a little baby then, but was marked by such an abrupt change in his life.
He would never forget his parents.
He couldn’t.
He had his mother’s green eyes and his father’s messy hair looking back at him every time he faced a mirror.
That day, Harry woke up long before the sun rise. It would be a full day for him, preparing his trunk for his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!
What to bring? What to leave behind? In fact, those questions were the less worrying ones in his mind now. What really was making his stomach spin since he received the letter and realized it was truth was the new life ahead of him.
He had never left Spinner’s End except for a few times, when he went with his father to Godric’s Hollow, to see where his parents once lived, and some occasional visits to Diagon Alley.
But this time, though his father was with him, he would be on his own for the first time.
While a bit nervous, he was really enjoying the idea.
His father – who he should call now, most of the times, Professor Snape – always told him the worst things about the students. They were a bunch of lazy knuckleheaded twits, just to say the least. He personally believed the school should be stricter with them and, if he was allowed, he would fail them all in Potions, because they were almost as useless as a muggle with a cauldron on his hands!
Nevertheless, he unfortunately had to admit it, some might have surprised him positively. Very few, however.
Harry was already used to the idea of secret passages, hidden doors, moving stairs, talking portraits, people moving in paintings. He had it all the time in the wizarding world, though he lived in a muggle street, in a muggle city, and knew how to get along with muggle people.
Nonetheless, according to the tales told by his father, the wizards’ school was very different from everything he new before.
Hogwarts was an ancient castle with, Harry imagined, the tricks and the secrets of centuries.
Tall walls filled with stories left untold. Long forgotten secret passages. Candles that burnt since ever. Dark closets with frightening secrets. Colossal rooms hidden behind insignificant doors. Tunnels that led to undiscovered locations. Traps that would loose you for all times. Books with lost tales or bright new ones to be built.
A whole world of discovery.
Harry was yearning for it!
However, some part of him was also a bit apprehensive. Dad would never agree with the out-law way of life he secretly desired for himself once in Hogwarts.
Maybe they could find a middle-term – Severus himself was up for some tricks and adventures once in a while!
As soon as he left Hogwarts, Severus Snape travelled the world for a while, seeking both muggle and wizard knowledge, with nothing more than a backpack, a warm cloak, his wand, and his intense thirst for learning, living sometimes as a muggle rover, others as a wizard wanderer, counting with no one else but himself.
He was a strong-minded man: he knew far-off places, met different people, faced unknown dangers.
And then returned.
Harry had the feeling he never found whatever he had be looking for, though he didn’t comment the subject.
Now, things were quite different.
His researches were now made at Hogwarts, or at home, and they barely left away.
On the few details of Severus’ life chronology that Harry could point, he could know exactly the moment when his life changed: the day he brought Harry to this house.
Severus had always been a good father – though adoptive, he was far better than many others. But maybe too protective. And definitely too stressed out!
After all, children are curious. And have that strange tendency to attract trouble, to fall once in a while, to get sick, to eat dirt.
It was high time – he thought as he decidedly thrown his snickers to the unmade bed – he would teach his father something!
Dragan undoubtedly didn’t like to be awakened. He hissed angrily at Harry. The white cat with bright yellow eyes stretched and then left for another room in the house, where his beauty sleep would not be disturbed again.
Harry smiled at the mirror.
He could see the pieces of the most important people in his path so far: his mother’s eyes, his father’s rebel hair, Severus’ steadiness in the eye, the Dark Lord’s mark… and, deep in the eye, a strange new glittering he had only been aware of a while ago.
That was himself.



Severus suddenly woke up broken-breathed in a pool of sweat, again.
It had been the same nightmare.
The red train at Hogsmeade. The fearful first years. Harry’s worried face among them. The procession following Hagrid. The feeble boats going precariously balanced along the lake. Then, as the castle frighteningly grew before their eyes, the light blue sky turned menacingly black, the bright sun wickedly hidden by fiendish dark clouds, the sly wind wildly disturbing the usually peaceful waters.
Finally, a gigantic tentacle emerged from the darkness and viciously captured one child from one of the frail boats, taking its prey to the bottom of the deep black waters.
One child only.
Severus could see clearly his fearing green eyes, his arms desperately reaching for him. In vain.
It was Harry.
He forced his breath to slow, and little by little gained conscience of where he was.
The cat, again disturbed, ran frantically away from his bed, where he was sleeping on Severus’ legs, to the point of making them senseless due to his weight.
Severus was sure it had to do with those pork chops he had at dinner last night.
Too much ginger, he believed.
For years now, since Harry came into his life, he devotedly tried to learn how to properly cook.
His mistake might have been the method chosen: TV cooking programs.
He had long ago given up Jamie Oliver, with that disgusting habit of using his hands for everything, but he was positively more comfortable learning from a male cook rather than a female cook. On this subject, he had the feeling ladies had their own vocabulary, and he definitely needed an illustrated instruction guide on the topic!
How could he – an expert in Potions, measures, stirrings, mixes, powders, roots, smells, textures – come out as a complete and outrageous failure in the kitchen?
That bloody squid would have it come, if something would happen to Harry during that crossing of the lake!!
He would tell Dumbledore off!
What was it with the pets going around loose in the castle fields!?!
A giant squid! What lake needs a giant squid? Some golden fishes are more than desirable!
Alas!, once he was awaken, he might as well go and see what Harry was up to, on his last day before Hogwarts.
And lunch would decidedly be pizza today!



The sunny Summer day had almost come to an end. No clouds in the sky, except for some bits of fluffy cotton pieces, and a soft breeze once in a while passing through the leaves of the trees and caressing the faces of those who came out for a bit of warmth.
Though it was tepid enough to call it a Summer day, Autumn was gently making its entrance.
The mild temperature had made it a quite pleasant afternoon: children were still hanging lose in the street, playing soccer, running and laughing, several mothers with their toddlers and baby prams chatting at each other.
An enormous black crow had been soaring not very high, and finally landed on a branch.
It was now a peaceful street: clean, well-ordered, with a few number of cool shadowy corners, and a meadow with old chestnut trees on its edge, unlikely to what had been a few years ago, when the dirty streets called loudly for trouble-making people.
The black haired man stopped by the playground and smirked as he spotted the last house of the street, right near the meadow.
It was just where he was heading.
At first, when one looked at him, he seemed quite a regular person: discreet sun glasses, black t-shirt, faded blue jeans, army boots, a leather jacket on his shoulder, an old ragged backpack on the other, with the look it had done many stormy miles, an unmistakable hooked nose, straight black hair by his shoulders, with two thin white strands, one on each side.
At first, this man would pass through that street unnoticed.
But people were, in fact, noticing him – looking at him, squinting on his direction, some even pointing their finger.
What was it about that man that those spectators could notice and find strange?
He was a wizard.
Well, one couldn’t tell it just by looking.
There was nothing about Ingeram Corvinus Prince that would tell us that he was, in fact, a wizard.
The reason why everyone seemed to find something particular about him was because he was an older but accurate copy of his nephew, Severus Snape, who lived in the house on the edge of the street.