I posit that the Slytherin Common Room isn’t as dark and mysterious and full of plotting as we believe.

It’s actually a junior Drones Club* and Severus is so exhausted and grouchy because he has to deal with students getting a stuffed and mounted thestral that they stole from the Wizarding Museum of Natural History stuck in the doorway.

¾ of the students can’t see it and he’s had to send more of them to Pomfrey for broken noses and the like than he has in almost a decade.

Somehow, this is Potter’s fault. He just knows it.

*See the delightful Bertie Wooster novels by PG Wodehouse. Also an excellent adaptation with Hugh Laurie as Bertie and Stephen Fry as Jeeves

More thoughts, including mostly more Madge

• Madge Snape was born Madge Fairchilde. She never knew her parents’ families. Either of them. They gave her some pablum about ‘difficulties’ and 'disapproval’. Only her grandparents had bought the cottage she grew up in and supported her parents. There were a large number of awkward silences in her childhood.
• The penny didn’t drop completely until her grandson went off to a school his parents only vaguely described. And she watched him in her garden, twirling about with a cloud of buttercups around him. She had a vague memory of a large house and a big garden and hushed voices…and the word Squib.
• It also wasn’t difficult to get Severus talking once he came back for the Summer. If she intimated more knowledge than she actually had, she’d be forgiven, most likely. He gave her a great deal to think about. Including the kind of family geneaology you couldn’t get down the local library.
• Catching Tobias in a sober moment, she gave him a few home truths. How his 'miraculous’ escapes during bombardments, how he always knew where the shells might fall, how he was always there to shove someone down, how he could move that fast, that gracefully was due to the same thing that sent his boy so far away. That it was her blood, his blood, and Eileen’s all together that gave Severus his…abilities.
• It was better, then. Not perfect, no, but there were no more raised fists. No more brutal beatings for Severus, either. She may have told him that if he didn’t clean up and stop taking out his anger and fear on his wife and child she’d see to it they left him. Eileen loved him too much to say those words. But they both knew she was the only person on the earth who could make Eileen leave.
• It helped that Severus came back. And kept coming back. She’d never say it, but she knew half her Toby’s hatred of magic was the fear it would take his son from him.
• She thanked whatever god or gods there were out there that she got to live to see Toby and Eileen happy together again.
• She never had a fancy career on stage, but she had solid work. Whenever she could, when she could spare the money, she’d rent a little studio for an afternoon and record a few songs. In her old age, she had them compiled on records for Severus. She even did a version of that song he liked so much by the man with the funny hair - Friday I’m in Love. She didn’t approve of his hair, but she liked his music.
• She did get to sing a broadway-type role once. It was Showboat and she brought the house down with Life Upon the Wicked Stage.
• Madge liked the punk music Severus played for her (much better than that noisy jazz that sounded like five vacuum cleaners and an accordion tossed down the stairs). She had quite a few words to say on the subject of not telling her about it sooner. And Queen…she liked Queen. She considered most of her peers hopeless fuddy-duddies.
• Madge outlived everyone but Severus, which was why he got her recordings and a legacy she’d put aside for him.
• And the cottage. And the bees.
• And her stock portfolio. (She kept up with the times)

• It wasn’t just his parents’ reputation (and Spinner’s End) that hurt Severus’ social life. People tended to whisper about his Nan. She’d been on the stage - a music hall principal - and there were many who said she was no better than she ought to be. But she’d been young and pretty with a husband disabled by war and a son to feed. If singing got her that, then she’d strut her stuff seven nights a week and Tuesday matinees until her voice gave out. Not like anyone complained during the next war, when her voice exhorting people to ‘be like the kettle and sing’ brought in much needed donations.
• Nan taught him all the best songs from the 1920s and 30s. He knew not to sing them around his teachers, though. For some reason, when he was tiny, singing The Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me could make his parents laugh so hard they’d forget their argument.
• Even as an adult, Severus can sing a large number of the dirtiest songs ever banned. He times Wolfsbane to A Bear in a Lady’s Boudoir.
• Nan’s 'wages of sin’ bought the house in Spinner’s End. She wanted to make sure her family would always be housed.
• Tobias Snape had thought his life would go much differently. He’d wound up a batman to one of the higher up officers (practically growing up in a wardrobe department meant he could mend just about anything…and he knew more about bizarre stain removal at age 9 than most full-grown people). After demob, he’d been employed as the man’s valet. He liked the work and it paid well, but death duties on the estate and ever-growing taxes put him out of work.
• Tobias ironed his own clothing. He tried showing Eileen, several times, but she and the iron never quite got on.
• Eileen and Tobias’ mother (Madge) were the only people who ever called him Toby.
• Eileen never really regretted leaving her family. She only wished the world was easier on her Toby.
• Until he started drinking, Eileen and Tobias enjoyed a good argument. They loved placing little bets on things and going to the library to find the answer.
• Later in life, Tobias got a job as a porter in a university residence hall. He expected the students to be hoity-toity types, but he found he liked them. They reminded him of his own boy and they liked that he remembered when they were having exams so he could wish them luck.
• Tobias quit drinking when he lost Eileen. Nothing really numbed that pain, although reconciling with Severus helped.
• Nan left Severus a little legacy, just enough to help him live independently after his own war.

“Now Ginny, don’t gawk. He’s a boy, not a kneazel in a shop.” Molly scolded lightly, pulling Ginny back to stand away from the train. She didn’t like to scold, not when poor Gin faced most of a year just with her, but you couldn’t go about gawking at people like that.

And he looked so much like Lily, right down to that sweet smile of hers, that her heart hurt for a moment. They’d been pregnant together, she and Lily and Alice, so they’d spent many long hours in the Burrow’s sitting room, waiting together. One couldn’t very well go on raids seven months gone. She found herself glad Lily lived on in Harry.

She could hold onto that.

“Mind if I sit here…everywhere else is full?”

Ron stumbled into the compartment as Fred poked him sharply in the back. They wanted to get Ron settled and be off to see Lee’s tarantula. Much more interesting than ickle firsties.

“Er, sure?” The red headed boy shifted a bit as if to get further out of the way.

“Brilliant! I’m Ron. Ron Weasley.” At least you could count on Ron to introduce himself.

“I’m Harry. Harry Potter.” The surname came at nearly a whisper.

“Budge up, Fred! Blimey he looks like his mum!” George exclaimed from behind him, crowding in and shutting the door.

“Is that bad? Everyone keeps…” He pressed his lips together as if afraid he’d said too much already.

“Course not!” Ron butted in. “It’s only everyone thought you’d look like your dad, you know.”

“Some blond prat was going on about it, nearly ran into me in the corridor.” George explained the shoving. “You’re the talk of the train.”

Harry groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “I didn’t even know about magic until Hagrid knocked the door in!”

“Hagrid knocked the…” Fred started.

“Door in?” George finished.

“My relatives don’t much like magic? Or anything that isn’t normal? My uncle sells drills.” The plaintive look on the kid’s face tugged at Fred’s heartstrings as an idea formed. He hadn’t the foggiest what a drill was, but he assumed it was something normal for Muggles.