“Are you all set?” Saturnine asked from where she stood near the doorjamb to Harry’s bedroom.

She preferred to stand there because it faced the bay window; she loved to gaze longingly through its panes. Or she could take in the entire room—from the bed on one side to the desk facing the opposite wall—in one glance. Smiling fondly, she observed Harry as he fastened his trunk’s latches before returning to his desk to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything there. She watched, amused, as he crossed the room to kneel by the bed and peer beneath it to check that nothing had been left there, either.

It did not escape her notice, as the boy double-checked everything one last time, that a quick ‘Accio Harry’s things’ would have solved the problem in no time at all. But sometimes, it was good for him to do things without magic. And she would cast the spell herself before they left to make sure that nothing was out of place.

When Harry was finally done fretting about the room, he came to a stop by his bed, looking as if he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. Entering the space, Saturnine motioned for him to sit down on the now-bare mattress, and she joined him there.

Things weren’t okay between them, and she knew it. She’d barely slept last night, busy as she was replaying their discussion by the cliffs. It hadn’t been enough, she knew; she hadn’t been enough. But should she have said more? Was she even ready for that… to admit aloud what she could barely even comprehend? Asking was the easy part, but being prepared for every possible answer was quite another beast to tackle entirely. And she wasn’t ready to go and poke that dragon yet.

But she had to make things right with Harry, though—one way or another. She couldn’t let him return to Hogwarts as he was, thinking that what they’d so carefully built between themselves—no matter that it remained unlabelled for now—had been lost.

Saturnine acted on the spur of the moment. Forgoing the lines she’d rehearsed in her mind, she reached up to the neckline of her hoodie. The cotton pooled near the place where the front of the hood started on both sides of her neck. Reaching below the layers with her fingers, she easily found the silver chain she kept hidden there. Pulling it up, her fingers deftly found the clasp and worked it open. Despite how fraught with meaning that particular necklace was, it felt nearly weightless once it rested on her open palm.

She held her hand out to Harry, and he peered down at the necklace with curiosity. Looped around a simple silver chain was the delicate pendant, a curling ‘S’. It was a gift from days long past—from a child who had since grown into a man she no longer knew.

“In well over twenty years, I have never once taken it off,” she explained. Already, her neck felt naked without the added weight of the chain around it. She had to resist the impulse to reach up to her neck to rub at it to try and ease the feeling. “I could easily stand to lose everything I own, but not this—never this.”

Then, grabbing both ends of the chain in her fingers, she reached forward to clasp it around Harry’s neck. “This is but a loan, Harry. I expect you to return it to me when the school year is over,” she told him in a grave tone to let him know she meant it. “So, don’t you lose it.”

Harry was quick to reach up a hand to shield the dangling ‘S’ protectively. “I won’t; I promise.”

“Keep it hidden under your clothes at all times. No one can be allowed to see it,” she cautioned. “It will keep you safe when I cannot and remind you that I’m never far away.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, gazing up at her with eyes a little too bright. He had yet to take his hand away from where it protectively cradled the silver pendant.

***

September 1st was still a week away. But Harry was fully packed, as was Saturnine.

Like all Hogwarts staff, she had to be present ahead of the term to arrange her classroom, stock up on supplies, and iron out the last details in anticipation of the school year that was about to begin. Thus, it had been decided that Harry would spend his last week of holidays at 12 Grimmauld Place with Ron and Hermione. And it would be Mr and Mrs Weasley that would take him, along with their other children, to Platform 9¾ to board the train to Hogwarts come August 31st.

Harry didn’t dread going back to Grimmauld as much as he had before. It was strange how much had changed within him in only two months. He still missed Sirius, and he knew that that particular pang of pain he felt every time he thought of him would never go away. But it didn’t overwhelm him to the point where he felt like he was suffocating anymore. And he could stand to see 12 Grimmauld Place again. After all, he already had—when they’d all Apparated there for safety after their encounter with the Death Eaters. And it had taken Harry a few hours after being back at Cove Cottage to realise he hadn’t once thought of Sirius in all the time he’d been there.

“Have you ever seen Muggles do magic tricks, Harry?” Saturnine asked from where she stood in front of a full-length mirror. Her question drew him out of his thoughts and back into the moment. “It’s fascinating how they manage to do so much with so little.”

They had both moved to the room that had been Saturnine’s for the summer. It was the same size as Harry’s had been, but it had a simple window in lieu of a bay window. And the en-suite had a bathtub instead of a shower cubicle.

The dark-haired witch stood in clothes Harry hadn’t seen her wear before. She wore ankle-high leather boots slightly more feminine than the sturdier ones she usually wore, black trousers so tight they disappeared inside the boots, and a long-sleeved, light-blue blouse with a tie-bow neck shirt. She certainly looked more professorial now than she’d ever had before, Harry reflected—and much more feminine. Blushing faintly, he quickly clamped down hard on that last thought.

“Muggle magic, Harry?” she asked him again when he’d failed to reply for too long.

“Huh, yeah… I might have seen a show once on the television when I was little.” And he had, hadn’t he? It felt like a lifetime away—before Hogwarts, before he discovered what real magic was like and that he had it in him to perform it. “A man in funny clothes, making things disappear.”

“Do you know how they do it?” she asked, looking at him through the reflection in the mirror she was facing rather than turning around. “Sleight of hand and misdirection,” she explained. “A lot of misdirection.”

Reaching behind her head with both hands, she gathered her long loose hair in one hand and used the other to twist it around itself. She wound it into a tight chignon that she secured in place with a black elastic band. Next, she pulled a small box out of her pocket, and from within, she removed a pair of brown contact lenses that she used to camouflage her familiar azure-blue gaze. Using various forms of makeup that Harry couldn’t name, she made her cheeks appear hollower and higher, added to the plumpness of her lips, and made her eyes appear more almond-shaped.

It was nothing transcendental, but every little change came together to redefine the image she presented. Harry could still recognise Saturnine underneath all the makeup—but only because he knew what to look out for and had seen the transformation happen firsthand. If he hadn’t known she’d changed her appearance and he’d run into her when he wasn’t expecting to see her, he might have been fooled.

Next, she added a pair of thick creole earrings studded with gemstones that sparkled, reflecting the light at every possible angle. Harry found them distracting; his gaze was frequently averted from Saturnine’s face to their glittering magnificence—which, he figured, was probably her intent.

“Magicians have a saying of which I am very fond,” Saturnine said, and her voice was different now, too. There was a faint trace of an accent that hadn’t been there before. It made him think of Fleur Delacour and the other Beauxbatons students he’d met during the Triwizard Tournament. But Saturnine’s accent was less pronounced—more like that of someone who’d been born abroad but who had been living in Britain for a few years now. He guessed that wasn’t too hard to pull off for someone who’d spent three years living in the north of France when she was younger.

“People only see what they’re expecting to see,” Saturnine finished, and the cadence of her words became slightly slower and more hesitant. “I find that to be particularly true where witches and wizards are concerned.”

The last item she pulled out was a pair of simple, square-shaped, black-rimmed prescription glasses that, when she put them on, lent her the air of a bookworm. This, and the way her shoulders now drooped forward, put her at odds with the confident witch who usually carried herself with the stance of a trained fighter who could hold her own against Death Eaters.

Harry marvelled at her disguise for its sheer simplicity. There was nothing magical about it. It wouldn’t wear off after a few hours like Polyjuice Potion did, and it couldn’t be dispelled by a counter-curse. Not even Alastor Moody’s magical eye could see through it. It was a Muggle masquerade—the perfect way to trick a school full of wizards and witches who would never once stop to look for something so out of their realm of thought.

Checking for the umpteenth time that the necklace with the small ‘S’ she’d entrusted him with was still there, beneath his dark-green shirt, Harry realised he’d better warn his friends, or else they would be in for quite a surprise when Professor Nine made her first appearance in their next Defence Against the Dark Arts class.

***

The seven-storey high castle of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry stood tall and fierce upon its bed of rocks, its many spires and turrets highlighted by the sun rising behind its bulk. Its three highest towers—the Astronomy, Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor—peeked above the clouds.

Squinting against the sunlight, Saturnine could barely discern the familiar window of the dorm she lived in for seven years, in Ravenclaw Tower. It felt strange coming back here and walking the familiar pathway that led in from Hogsmeade. Part of her rejoiced at the familiar sight of the calm Black Lake south of the castle and the green expanses of the dense Forbidden Forest that stretched in the distance everywhere the eye could see. But another part of her was filled with dread at the dangerous situation she was about to put herself into.

She hadn’t come back to the Highlands of Scotland in fifteen years, and there was little left of the shy eighteen-year-old witch who had left the school grounds with a broken heart and rage coursing through her veins. She was thirty-three now and all grown up. Even without the makeup and disguise that she had put on, she doubted her old professors would have recognised her. She’d been but one student amongst hundreds, and she hadn’t given any of them a reason to think of her in decades. But the disguise, she knew, wasn’t for them.

This whole masquerade had been designed with only one wizard in mind—one person Saturnine needed to fool at all costs. People only see what they’re expecting to see, she reminded herself, and Severus Snape wasn’t expecting to see his long-lost sister enter the Great Hall today to join him in his world of lies and deceit.

Saturnine had grown several inches since they had parted ways, and her figure had blossomed into that of a woman. The baby fat was entirely gone from her cheeks, and her daily physical exercise regimen had earned her a lean and toned body. But years passing and physical changes wouldn’t be enough; Severus would recognise his sister’s traits in a heartbeat. So, she’d upped the ante and added every Muggle trick she could think of to fool him.

Unsure if it would work, worried that Severus would see right through her disguise at a glance, but with no other choice, Saturnine pushed forward until she stood by the large oak doors that shielded her from whatever fate awaited her inside. What would happen if he recognised her? Would the old rancour that existed between them persist? Would the last fifteen years have been enough to ease their sharp edges, or would it have been just enough time for them to fester and mature into the foulest of beasts?

Either way, the revelation of her true identity, were it to come to light, would put both of the Snape siblings’ lives at risk. Severus was a known Death Eater who stood close by the Dark Lord’s side, and Saturnine was Dumbledore’s secret weapon in the war against Voldemort. It didn’t matter that they had both sworn to protect Lily Evans’ child. In a war as ruthless as the one they were fighting in, either side could try and use them against each other.

Albus Dumbledore had reset his pieces on the chessboard, and it was time for a new game to begin. Saturnine would move as the headmaster intended her to, for now. But she knew that if it came down to a choice between the old wizard’s Grand Plan and Harry Potter’s life, she wouldn’t think twice—consequences of the war effort be damned.

Steeling her nerves and pushing her glasses back up the length of her nose with the tip of a finger, Saturnine Eileen Snape pushed open the heavy oak doors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Knowing her disguise was the best she could make it for where she was going, she could only hope it would be enough and that she wouldn’t crack under the pressure.

***

“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory evolved.”

—Sun Tsu

~ End Of Part One ~