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Coming of Age (Female Potter)	By : stargazer67 Category: HP Canon Characters paired with Original Characters > Het - Male/Female Views: 11694 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
A couple of months go by; Voldemort is out of the country chasing down the rumor of the Elder Wand, Ron and Hermione are doing research trying to discover what the other Horcruxes might be, and Evie is enraged by the news that Snape has been named the new headmaster of Hogwarts. After the term starts, one day Phineas appears in his portrait, and he looks very serious – more serious than she’s ever seen him.
He tells her that an owl is about to arrive with a package for her, and that Dumbledore (via his portrait at Hogwarts; she’d almost forgotten that he’d have one there now too) told him to remind her of the promise she made.
She can’t think what promise he means until the package arrives, and she opens a letter wrapped around a small flask, and sees that it is from Snape. Her first impulse is to hurl it away from her, but Phineas clears his throat and she realizes this is the promise he meant; she had promised Dumbledore that she would hear him out, and fairly.
The letter is short – it tells her only that the flask should be emptied into the Pensieve, and that the memories are keyed only to her and each memory will only be viewable once, they will disappear once seen.
She sits with the flask in her hand for nearly an hour, angry and not wanting to see whatever it is he wants to show her. Phineas is gone again, he won’t know if she looked at them or not; but finally she decides that she’d best do it, after all she did promise.
She is surprised by the first memory – a girl who looks a lot like her, and a boy who apparently is Snape. With a start she realizes that the girl is her mother when Snape calls her by name. The memories come fast one after the other, as the boy and girl spend time together talking and laughing during the summer, and then are off to Hogwarts, Sorted into different Houses – he to Slytherin, and she to Gryffindor.
She sees Snape looking longingly at Lily every time he sees her, as she integrates into Gryffindor, becoming friends with James, Sirius and Lupin. She then sees the rest of the memory that she only saw part of when Snape was giving her Occlumency lessons, when her father and Sirius were torturing Snape, embarrassing him; she sees her mother running up and begging them to stop it, and the sneer on Snape’s face as he calls her a mudblood, in his anger and shame.
She sees Snape later begging Lily for forgiveness, and her turning her back on him and saying she cannot possibly continue being friends with a Death Eater. She sees him crying silently later, standing at the window in his dorm room, late at night when everyone else is asleep. She can almost feel Snape’s despair as he watches Lily and James from a distance, becoming a serious couple; his greatest love, giving her full allegiance to his greatest enemy.
Evie stops and pulls out of the Pensieve for a moment, digesting all of this. It explains so much, even explains more fully Phineas’s cryptic comment about why Snape would act so particularly cruelly towards her when he saw she was pregnant with Sirius’s child.
She realizes, especially from how much she resembled her mother at the same age, how much of a conflict he’d always have felt when looking at her. The very image of his childhood best friend, and teenaged first love in her own face and eyes, along with also being a constant tangible reminder of Lily’s choice of James over him. Biting her lip, she plunges back into the Pensieve…
In the next memory, an adult Snape is on his knees on a bare and windy hilltop, saying “no, don’t kill me” as Dumbledore Apparates into view. Dumbledore asks what a Death Eater could possibly want from him. Tears in his eyes, Snape tells Dumbledore that Voldemort believes the prophecy (that he’s heard only part of) refers to Lily and James’s child, and Voldemort plans to murder all of them.
Dumbledore sneers and asks him to just ask his Dark Lord to spare Lily, and Snape says that he has, to no avail. He begs again for Dumbledore to protect her, and Dumbledore turns back to him and asks what he’ll give in return. Without any hesitation, he cries from the depths of his soul – “Anything!”
The next memory starts with a wild, keening animal-like sound; and it takes her a moment to realize where it’s coming from, it is Snape sobbing in Dumbledore’s office. He chokes out, “You said you would protect her..!”, and Dumbledore replies wearily that he did all he could, they were betrayed by their own friend. He goes on to say that Evie survived, and adds that she has her mother’s eyes.
Snape looks up at him quickly, as if to determine whether Dumbledore is insinuating that he may have a second chance, in Evie. They look at each other for a long moment, and then Dumbledore says Evie needs protection, but Snape says he can’t see why, the Dark Lord is gone.
Dumbledore replies that he’s certain that Voldemort will be back, and Evie will be his first target; and finally Snape promises to protect her, extracting his own promise from Dumbledore that he will never tell her, or anyone else. Dumbledore looks kindly at him and says, “You want me to give my word that I shall never reveal the best of you, Severus?” Snape emphatically says again, “promise me!”, and Dumbledore sighs and promises that he’ll never tell.
Again Evie pauses and withdraws from the Pensieve for a moment. She’s never really thought about it but in retrospect sees it clearly, now - how it so often seemed like he was ‘there’ whenever she was in danger, but yet she never really felt like it was anything other than pure coincidence (or worse, was a result of him doing his best to catch her doing something wrong, and so just ‘happening’ to be there when trouble started as well).
She thinks back to all the times he put himself between her and danger, casting her own memories in a completely different light, now; whether it was him interfering with Quirrell’s curse on her broom, or disarming Sirius when everyone still thought Sirius was there to kill her; or putting himself between her and Lupin as the full moon turned Remus from man to wolf.
She is humbled by these memories, the fierce, brave protector that she never even knew she had. She still can’t reconcile this with him so heartlessly killing Dumbledore, but she now hopes the answer still lies in the Pensieve and dives back in.
And the explanation is there, in the very next memory she sees. She sees Snape examining Dumbledore’s blackened hand, berating him for putting on the ring without checking it for curses first. He tells Dumbledore that the potion he’s given him will confine the curse to his hand for now, but he’s got a year at best to live.
She sees Dumbledore quite reasonably tell him that this is a perfect opportunity for him to remove all doubts that Voldemort and the rest of the Death Eaters might have of him and where his loyalties lie – he will be the one to kill Dumbledore when the time comes.
Snape at first refuses, but Dumbledore talks calmly about what the alternatives would be; a crippling, painful death from the curse itself as it spreads, or, if a point comes where it looks like the Death Eaters will get the better of him…being bitten by Fenrir Greyback and forced to live out whatever remains of his life before the curse takes him, as a werewolf; or being turned over to Bellatrix for as much torture as she can dish out, until he begs for death repeatedly.
Snape turns away, unshed tears glittering in his eyes, but agrees in the end that he’ll do as Dumbledore asks. He can’t see that he has a choice about it, the alternatives would in fact be much worse.
She can feel the crushing weight on him from having to carry this burden, knowing that Dumbledore is right but still not wanting to have to be the one to carry it out. She remembers Dumbledore looking at him and saying “Severus…please…”; and it takes on a whole new meaning, now. At the time she thought that Dumbledore was pleading for his life; now she knows he was pleading with Snape to fulfill his promise.
The next memory shows her what Snape was reliving in his dream, that first day he fell asleep in her bed; and she cries along with him as she sees him gently lift the fallen body of her mother, holding her tightly and weeping in agony.
Then she sees him outside Grimmauld Place, apparently the night he first came to visit after Sirius died. He is walking up to the door, and then walking away from it, and then walking up to it again and raising his hand to knock, and then walking away again. Finally, he walks up to it and stands there for a long moment, and then knocks. She sees herself answer, the confusion on her face giving way to compassion at the expression on his face; she hadn’t even realized herself that she had expressed any sympathy towards him at that moment, even non-verbally.
The scene shifts to the Headmaster’s office, and she’s surprised to hear him talking with Dumbledore about her; calling her a friend and miserable at the prospect of losing her friendship over what he must do. She is humbled to think that she had come to mean that much to him; and now she understands why Dumbledore extracted that promise from her, outside the cave.

[Author's Note: I realize that this chapter is mostly direct reiteration of the book/movie; I initially tried to do it without re-relating what anyone reading would already know, but it seemed too disjointed that way. No plagarism is intended, inclusion was purely for the sake of story continuity.]
- 13
- 14
- 15
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Coming of Age (Female Potter)