Evening. Regulus left the Library, headed for the Great Hall and dinner.

At the corridor’s bend, in the dimmer stretch, Snape stood waiting.

The usual spot. The same place he’d stood last time with his face blackened, reporting on Rabastan Lestrange. Right here.

Nearly a month into the term, and Snape hadn’t appeared once.

Two contracts, Silvermoon Apothecary and Bobbins’ Herb and Potion Shop, laid before him at Christmas. The thirty-day reply window had passed.

Regulus hadn’t given it much thought. Snape would choose. Given his circumstances, given how badly he needed a way out, there was no version of events where he didn’t. The only question was which one.

Bobbins. No visible connection to the Black family on the surface.

Snape lands the contract on his own merit. Talent and a bit of luck. Others could only envy him, maybe mutter a few sour words.

His pride stays intact. His dignity preserved. Severus Snape, getting by on ability alone.

Silvermoon. A Diagon Alley institution, in business for nearly a century.

Anyone who’d spent a day in Britain’s potions trade knew Silvermoon was Black family property. Generations of reputation behind the name.

Choosing Silvermoon meant choosing the Black side. Obvious to anyone paying attention.

Given the current climate, that might not even draw criticism.

After the Christmas banquet, half the pure-blood families in Britain were scrambling for a way into the Blacks’ orbit and finding no door. A half-blood nobody like Snape landing that connection...

The sour words would multiply, but that was the extent of it.

What Snape was agonizing over, Regulus could guess well enough.

He was arrogant enough to believe that with his potions talent, the future would sort itself out regardless.

The path to Potions Master stretched ahead of him, and once he reached that summit, who’d remember he’d grown up wearing ill-fitting robes on Spinner’s End?

That was where he’d come from. Nothing more.

But he was also insecure enough to see his present with brutal clarity. Potions talent was a future asset. Right now, he was still that threadbare Snape, years-old robes with the collar fraying to fuzz, the wretch from Spinner’s End.

Talent would carry him later. It couldn’t change a thing today.

Snape was caught between the two. The arrogance told him he shouldn’t depend on anyone. The insecurity told him that without depending on someone, nothing about his situation would change.

Those two forces wound around each other, and the result was Snape. So he agonized.

Choosing Silvermoon, in his own eyes, was dependence.

No matter how good the terms, how generous the commission, how favorable the supplier arrangement compared to anything else in Britain’s potions market, what did it matter?

Carry the Silvermoon name and you carried the Black label. His work goes out the door, and the first thing anyone thinks of is Silvermoon Apothecary. Severus Snape comes second.

His pride couldn’t swallow it. His insecurity knew he had to.

Then there was the Lestrange problem.

Choose Silvermoon, and if the Lestranges still had the reach to settle scores, a half-blood with no backing would be the first one called to account.

Bobbins was safer. No surface tie to the Blacks. Nothing for anyone to find.

So he needed to know what had become of the Lestranges first.

But the Snape household was too poor to subscribe to a newspaper. The holidays meant being trapped on Spinner’s End, blind to everything happening outside.

When term started, Snape stood in his corner and watched everything.

He’d spent the entire opening night on the edges of the crowd. No one noticed him. He noticed everyone.

But he didn’t act. He started observing Rabastan, who was still at school but nothing like before.

Last term, Rabastan had moved through the corridors with an entourage and wind at his back, carrying himself like a minor boss in the Slytherin common room.

Now, the hangers-on had scattered. Cross paths with Rabastan in the corridor and his head was down, eyes meeting no one’s.

He’d sat in the middle of the Slytherin table before, voice carrying. Now he sat at the far end, ate in silence, and left the moment he finished.

Rabastan was trying to make himself invisible.

A Lestrange, in Slytherin, reduced to this. That told Snape everything he needed to know.

He watched for a week. Then another. Finally confirmed it. This wasn’t an act. There was nothing larger moving behind Rabastan.

The Lestrange threat, at least inside Hogwarts, had ceased to exist.

Risk cleared. Contract still waiting. One evening in the dormitory, Snape signed. Silvermoon.

Now here he was.

From a distance, the same as always. A dark smudge. Thin. Sallow skin, greasy hair hanging on either side of his face, expression permanently overcast.

Regulus walked closer and saw the difference.

The robes were new. The fabric was several grades above what he’d worn before, heavy with a proper drape.

Cuffs neatly finished. Collar lying flat and clean. The hem was finally the right length.

No exposed wrists. No exposed ankles. Wrapped head to toe in pure black, he looked considerably more presentable.

Still black, though.

Solid black from collar to hem, buttons included. Still a little bat, only one that had molted into a sleeker coat, glossier than before.

Snape noticed him approaching. His head tilted a fraction, gaze drifting to the other side of the corridor, lips pressed together, radiating an aura of I happen to be standing here.

Regulus’s eyes swept over him and caught it: at the fold of his collar, a badge no larger than a fingernail, silver, catching the torchlight for an instant.

Silvermoon Apothecary supplier certification.

The potions industry had two certification systems.

The official one came from the Potions Master Association.

Being a certified Potioneer in wizarding Britain was a true professional distinction, and the weight it carried was immense.

Earning Association certification involved a process long enough to deter most people before they started.

An Outstanding on the Potions NEWT was the baseline. Then a practice application to the Association.

Then examinations covering three specializations: foundational potions, advanced potions, and experimental potions. Fail any one, start over.

Passing wasn’t the end. Two years of apprenticeship minimum, under a registered Potioneer, with quarterly research reports and brewing logs submitted for review by the Association’s evaluation committee.

Clear every hurdle, and you received a gold badge engraved with the Association’s crest and a registration number, worn openly on the outside of your robes.

The fastest anyone completed the process was five to six years after leaving Hogwarts.

Fewer than twenty people in all of Britain earned full certification each year.

St Mungo’s potions department. The Ministry’s Potions Control Division researchers. Core members of the major potions laboratories. Almost all certified Potioneers.

Hold that badge, and you had standing. You could open a shop, lend your name, consult for the Ministry.

Snape was a long way from any of that. He was a third-year.

But Silvermoon had its own system.

Silvermoon Apothecary had operated in Diagon Alley for nearly a century, built and maintained by generations of the Black family.

Its standing in Britain’s potions trade rested on close to a hundred years of consistent quality and exacting standards.

Silvermoon’s quality control was stricter than the Association’s. The Association determined whether something could be sold. Silvermoon determined whether it was worthy of bearing Silvermoon’s name.

Suppliers who passed Silvermoon’s internal quality review received a small silver badge.

Small. Unassuming. To the uninitiated, nothing at all.

Within the potions trade, it meant Silvermoon’s endorsement. Nearly a century of the Black family name standing behind your work.

It represented quality and, more than that, recognition from the industry’s most discerning clientele.

Plenty of veteran Potioneers with decades of experience couldn’t pass Silvermoon’s standards.

Snape had pinned his to the inside of his robes. Standing normally, it was invisible from the outside.

He’d come in his new robes to wait for Regulus, positioned at precisely this angle, in precisely this stance, so that someone walking up close would catch that glint of silver at the collar’s inner fold.

He wanted Regulus to see it.

He’d probably planned ahead, too. In the right settings, before the right people, an accidental glimpse. Nothing more.

Anyone who recognized the badge would be knowledgeable. Mostly pure-bloods, though some well-connected half-bloods or Muggle-borns outside school would know it too.

Flash this badge in front of those people and he wouldn’t need to say a word. The badge would speak for him.

For Snape, this badge probably meant more than the new robes.

He wanted this desperately.

To be recognized. To carry weight. To walk into a room and have people see ability and standing, not the pauper from Spinner’s End.

So he wore it on the inside. No display. No boasting. Only when it mattered, only for the people who should see it.

Regulus stopped in front of him.

Snape’s expression didn’t shift. Chin lifted a fraction, every line of him rigid.

His voice was flat. "Black."

Regulus matched him. Flatter still. "Snape."

They held each other’s gaze in the corridor’s shadows.

Snape waited a few seconds. When Regulus showed no intention of saying anything further, he gave the barest nod, turned, and walked away.

A few strides, a turn at the corridor’s end. Gone.

Regulus stood where he was, watching the direction Snape had gone.

Snape had chosen Silvermoon. Leaned toward the Blacks. But he wouldn’t advertise it. The marker stayed hidden, the alignment half-concealed, half-revealed.

He’d chosen. But he’d kept the posture of independence. No flag raised.

I chose your side. But I’m still my own man. Not your follower.

Regulus didn’t mind.

In his framework, Snape had never occupied the same category as Lina or Samuel, the outer circle.

Those two operated within his system, moved through his structure. Their ceiling depended on how much room he chose to give them.

Snape was different. Too proud. Proud enough that he needed to retain some measure of autonomy.

That was fine. Regulus didn’t need him as a follower.

Severus Snape. Future Potions Master. Deeply versed in the Dark Arts. Patient. Meticulous. An extraordinarily valuable asset.

Maintained properly, this partnership could yield more than anyone else in the entire network.

Within that framework, Snape was at least treated as a person.

Compared to the humiliation and coercion the Lestranges had offered, this was the best deal he’d find in Slytherin.

Regulus looked away.

Time for dinner.

---

Eight o’clock. End of the fourth-floor corridor. An abandoned classroom.

Regulus pushed the door open. Same as always. Desks and chairs shoved to the sides, the center cleared, a thin layer of dust on the wooden floor.

No one had been here.

Baruk sprang from the inner pocket, eight legs tapping across the floor to the nearest desk, where he curled into a dark red ball of fuzz underneath.

Before long, the door swung open.

Lily stood in the doorway, slightly out of breath, cheeks flushed, red hair with a few strands loose around her ears, slightly tousled.

She saw him, and her eyes curved. A smile broke across her face.

She wore her Gryffindor robes, scarf wound twice around her neck, the tip of her nose pink from the cold. She’d probably sprinted all the way from the tower.

She shut the door, turned to face Regulus, tilted her head. Her voice was bright, the last syllable lilting upward. "Professor Regulus."

Regulus clasped his hands behind his back, chin raised a fraction, tone grave. "Student Lily."