The Missing Marauder: A Harry Potter FanFiction

Chapter 8

Severus Snape was making his way through the portrait that led him into the Slytherin common room. He'd made it through Potions without threatening to kill Lestrange, but he at least needed to know why the fool used his spell in front of a dozen witnesses.  

What had that idiot been thinking?  

Obviously, unlike Snape himself, he had not been thinking at all.  

That idiot!  

The dungeon-like room was full of Slytherins, doing their homework, talking, eating, and being jerks, as always. But Rabastan Lestrange, sitting in a green armchair, was surrounded by hopeful girls, to whom he was telling the story of how he'd used an unknown hex on that Hufflepuff boy.  

Among the girls was Bellatrix Black, who was visiting the school, using the fact that she was meant to bring Rabastan home to Rodolphus, his elder brother who couldn't come, as an excuse to be there. Her thick, black hair shone in the fire's light. She was obviously flirting with Rabastan, the way her lower lip was jutting out in a puppy-dog face, the way she stared up at him through perfectly luscious eyelashes, and it was quite possible that she was only acting that way because, Snape had heard, she had recently gotten into an "argument" with her boyfriend and wanted revenge, but he seemed more interested on the story then the group of girls.  

"Yes, it was absolutely hysterical!" he told them, "How the boy kept whimpering and begging for me to let him down. I've never had so much control over one person before! I like having that control. I like it a lot."  

"Oh, Rabastan," Bellatrix cooed, stroking his arm, "What exactly did it feel like having so much control over him?"  

"It felt like I was the one with the power and I could do whatever I wanted to him because he'd lost," he replied, "And I'd won."  

"Wow," another girl praised, "You must've been having the time of your life up until-"  

"Slughorn came?" he finished for her, "Yes, as a matter-of-fact, I was. I was going to try and shake all the Knuts out of his pockets, but no, Professor Slughorn came and stopped me."  

"For good reason!" Snape exclaimed as he sat down on another green armchair, "He'd probably never seen a spell like that in his entire life. And do you know why he didn't?"  

All the girls were silent as they stared at him, a protective circle around Rabastan. Finally Bellatrix broke the quiet and asked exasperatedly, "Why?" She didn't sound remotely interested.  

He leaned back in the chair, trying to pull off what some of his group of friends called a "Sirius Black". With his hands behind his greasy head and his eyes closed, he replied, "Because I invented it."  

They all stared at him, some looking back at Rabastan, and then burst into laughter.  

"Right," Bellatrix said, unable to stop laughing, "Right, you invented a spell that hangs people upside down by their ankles. Sure, you just keep believing that, Snape."  

His eyes opened so fast that none of them noticed his furious glare. He sat up straight on the edge of his chair.  

"I did," he insisted, "I invented Levicorpus. I wrote it down, all of my notes on it, in my-"  

"Your what?" Bellatrix asked, making her voice sound babyish, jutting out her lower lip, "Your diary? Do you keep a diary, Severus?"  

"No!" he exclaimed, darting out of his seat, "I most certainly do not keep a diary! Diaries are for girls!"