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An Early Autumn Morning
by ntamara [Reviews - 3] 
Autumn 1979 Severus Snape hated cats. This did not mean he was a dog person, far from it. His paternal grandmother had had a number of small yapping terriers that she doted upon, vicious and stinking little bundles of fur and teeth that made staying over at his grandparents’ hell. The fact that whenever one passed away she had the ‘little darling’ stuffed, mummified and put on display around the house, each of them staring at him with their glassy dead eyes, had been a source of nightmares through his early childhood years. She had died a few years ago, and left the house and her (small) fortune to him. The first thing he did was go through every room and incendio the dead dogs. The three terriers that had still been alive found their way into various potions or fell victim to one of his experiments. Severus still smiled nastily at the memory. Three weeks later the will had been read in detail. Only then had he discovered that his inheritance was subject to taking care of ‘Precious’, ‘Cherry’ and ‘Belle’, and furthermore maintaining the mummification spells on all Nana Snape’s departed ‘little darlings’. A very distant cousin now held the house and the vault at Gringotts. It had taken Severus nearly a year to earn and pay back the money that he had already spent, but Severus thought the satisfaction of watching those little horrors go up in flames was more than worth every galleon. It was fair to say that, in general, Severus Snape did not like animals. Period. He did not mind rats too much; they were perfect for testing his experimental potions on. Owls could be useful, but for some reason they tended to shred or shit on his mail. Honestly, pluck one of the school’s owls for a flight potion... Snakes were all right, Severus supposed. They were extremely useful in Potions – venom, blood, scales – and he thought they made a worthy mascot for Slytherin. While a bite could do much damage, if not outright kill, they tended not to attack unless provoked, and Snape always had a veritable store of antivenins and other potions against poisons on his person. However, their most appealing feature in Severus’ mind was the fact that they did not shed hair. Unlike cats. Severus scowled and rubbed at his temples, feeling the onset of yet another migraine. It was early in the morning, and only a little while ago it had been a very late night. He stared at the cauldron filled with lumpy orange sludge instead of a smooth and translucent Draught of Living Death. Abducting opponents of the Dark Lord was amazingly easy when their friends and families believed them to be already dead and buried. It also had the advantage of no one ever looking for them. Moreover, there was a handy place to return the body to when they had outlived their usefulness and lost all entertainment value. This particular variation on the traditional Draught was more potent and induced a deathlike slumber for anytime from seventy-two hours to a week, even giving the body the appearance and all the symptoms of a normal corpse. Wizarding customs dictated that a body be buried within forty-eight hours, after a twenty-four hour wake – the normal maximum period of a Draught of Living Death. Severus was proud of his accomplishment, and knew that the Dark Lord appreciated and respected him for his skill. However, this potion was extremely difficult to make. It required a number of very expensive and rare ingredients, and was extremely vulnerable to pollution of any kind. Severus stirred the murky glop once more, lifted the glass ladle from the cauldron and glared at the ginger hairs that had just cost him nearly two days of non-stop brewing. He turned his head slightly to the left and let his gaze rest on the orange menace currently sitting on one of his workbenches – contaminating even more painstakingly prepared ingredients – and licking itself clean. There was only so much a Potions master could take; Severus dropped the glass stirring spoon – not hearing the glass crack as it hit the edge of the copper cauldron – and went for his wand. The Dark Lord was a powerful and intelligent wizard. Severus admired and respected him greatly, but he could not understand Lord Voldemort’s preoccupation with cats. Salazar’s Fen, his Lordship’s base of operation, was positively teeming with cats of all kinds, most of them female, and a lot of them strays. Most of the female Death Eaters doted upon them, carrying kittens on their shoulders as they went about their business, and the majority of the men seemed equally smitten with the furry menaces. Severus sneered and taught himself the charm to repel the inevitable hairs from his black robes. He had expected the Dark Lord – who was a parselmouth after all – to have snakes slithering around, but there was just the one: a six-foot green snake that rarely showed itself outside of Lord Voldemort’s private quarters. Severus had been in the Dark Lord’s service for nearly a year now. He had suffered the indignities of the furry little menaces, and this orange tomcat in particular. It strutted around the mansion as if it owned the place, sharpening its claws on Severus’ cape, curling up to sleep in Severus’ Death Eater mask, being infuriatingly cute and reducing otherwise hardened and ruthless wizards and witches to senseless coo’ing, ooh’ing and aah’ing. It seemed the only other Death Eater not affected by this folly was Lucius Malfoy, who was violently allergic to cats and – as Bellatrix had told Severus over drinks one night – had become violently sick on his first visit to the manor: asthma, red and tearful eyes, runny nose, sneezing, the works. Severus would have paid good money to see that. Unfortunately, the Dark Lord had found a hex that cured Lucius of his allergy, even if Malfoy still kept a cautious distance from anything even remotely feline. Severus Snape hated cats and this one in particular. Now it had crossed the line. Ruining his hard work, ruining the potion that Lord Voldemort had personally asked him to prepare. The wretched beast just sat there, watching him – smugly – with its infuriating glass green eyes. “Abrade Capillas Felicis!” He slashed his wand through the air, from left to right, and shouted the spell. Those haughty green eyes widened in surprise and the cat yowled, jumping nearly five feet straight up into the air. It hissed and clawed furiously and fruitlessly as an invisible force stripped it of its ginger coat. Severus watched it all gleefully – not caring that orange hair littered the entire room – and he relished that same satisfaction he had felt when incinerating Nana Snape’s stuffed terriers. A pitiful and naked tomcat dropped to the hard stone floor and sped out the door even as the spell shaved off the last tuft of orange fur at the tip of its tail. Severus chuckled slightly to himself as he locked the door behind it and warded it again for good measure. He turned around and surveyed the disaster area that was his lab. Cat hair was everywhere, contaminating everything, but it had been worth it. Severus rolled up the sleeves of his work robes, brandished his wand, and set about getting rid of it all. He had a potion to prepare for his Lord. Forty-eight hours later Severus Snape emerged triumphant from his workrooms at Salazar’s fen. He was hopped up on Pepper-Up and Wide-Eyes and other performance enhancing potions. His eyes were too bright, and his feet wanted to skip through the long corridors to his Lord’s rooms. He hardly noticed the amused and sometimes disgusted glances he received from the other Death Eaters. His hair was even greasier than normal, hanging in lank and dirty tresses around his face, and his nose was red and irritated from Wide-Eyes, a powder that was most effective when inhaled. However, Severus could not care less. In his hands, he held a large bottle of his improved Draught of Living Death, and he was certain that Lord Voldemort would be pleased. When he knocked on the doors to his Lord’s private chambers, Pettigrew opened them. Severus scowled and then stomped down on the feelings of jealousy that arose every time he saw Potter’s pathetic little pet-project. Nobody knew why or how Pettigrew had managed to join the Death Eater ranks and become one of Lord Voldemort’s most trusted servants. He was their spy in Muggle-loving Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix, and it was an open secret that he spent most of the rest of his time in their Lord’s bedchambers. Why Lord Voldemort would deign to fuck Peter Pettigrew of all people Severus could not understand. He understood keenly why he himself would never have that honour – although he could always hope; Lord Voldemort had already shown that he valued talent and dedication more than looks or standing – but Pettigrew? Severus banished these unworthy thoughts; who was he to question his Lord? And Pettigrew had been providing rather useful information since his initiation. He heard the door to the Dark Lord’s inner sanctum open and close, and he quickly knelt, eyes firmly fixed on the green and silver patterned carpet beneath him. “My Lord, I have completed the task you set for me,” he said and held the intricate glass bottle out in front of him. There was no answer and while Severus could feel his Lord’s gaze upon him, he did not hear any footsteps. Thus, he startled when a pair of bare feet moved into his line of vision. His mouth fell open in surprise, and then rapidly lust, as he uncertainly looked upward. Pale, muscled legs and thighs, a beautifully thick cock and a pair of hairless balls. For one blissful moment, Severus thought his dreams had come true. Then he moved his eyes up an equally hairless stomach and chest, and dread and horror gripped his heart as he took in the full sight of Lord Voldemort. The Dark Lord twirled his wand idly in his left hand, right hand resting on his naked hip. For a man in his fifties he looked remarkably good, with just the right amount of muscle tone. However, green eyes – glass green eyes – were narrowed dangerously and looking at Severus with what could only be called angry menace. Gone was Lord Voldemort’s dark hair, streaked with grey – he was bald, from the tip of his toes to his skull. Without hair on his head, his ears seemed overly large and stuck out. Severus began to shake, and it was a good thing Pettigrew plucked the bottle of Draught from his fingers because otherwise he most likely would have dropped it. “Severus,” Lord Voldemort hissed, clearly not at all pleased with his new appearance. “Tell me you have a hair growth potion in your stores.” Severus Snape hated cats and Lord Voldemort’s ginger tomcat in particular. He could not remember exactly why; there was a memory, vague and blurred and filled with pain. He remembered that he had done something to that ginger tomcat, and he remembered that the Dark Lord had not been pleased. However, what he had done and exactly why it had upset Lord Voldemort so – something more than just having apparently hurt one of Lord Voldemort’s pets – was lost. It had been a month, and whatever trespass Severus had committed, the Dark Lord seemed to have forgiven him. Nevertheless, every time that wretched orange menace invaded his potions laboratory, every time his wand hand itched to cast an epilating hex on the rotten little beast after it ruined yet another of his potions, his bones ached with the memory of Cruciatus. Therefore, he gritted his teeth, grimaced, and perfected his cat hair repelling charms. He could have learnt to live with just that, but to add insult to injury, the Dark Lord had decided to bestow upon him the duty of cleaning Tom-Tom’s litter box. Severus Snape really hated cats. the end
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