29) Project P and a Date 1

Alice slowly looked at the large building which they had found themselves in. She walked besides Severus as they entered the building which was the only building around the area. The rest of it were mainly trees and forests with a river over the distance, she honestly didn't knew that Severus idea of a date involved an abandoned building with forests around.

"This is the Project P initial sitebase" Severus spoke up as they passed through an open gate. The gate in the statement was a large iron gate which had the curved spiky designs for some reason on it.

"You never told me what is this Project P" Alice said with a small huff, it was true. While it was mentioned infront of her by Evelyn and Severus, they each never talked about it much or avoided the matter directly when she asked.

"They say the fruits of patience are sweet dear Alice" Severus said jokingly with a small amused tone of his own. Alice still felt a little overwhelmed about how different was Severus from school to outside of it.

"Well am I going to find out about this mysterious Project?" Alice asked with a small teasing tone of hers as she quipped back to Severus.

"Ofcourse then we are going to our date" Severus said looking at her with a small smile.

Alice looked at the ground infront of her as she avoided his eyes. She still could not believe that she was going to date with Severus upon whom she had been crushing a little for about 10 days, it was bizzare to say the least.

"We are here" he said as they entered the large warehouse type of building. It was around three storeyed with a large hall completely covering the base with some side rooms on the sides. The side rooms were in turn long and looked like to be classrooms. There were two staircases on the end part both on each side.

She could hear sounds from the nearest room of the base floor near the entrance and they walked there.

The room was spacey and there were some familiar persons there, she recognised the face of Lucius Malfoy, Eileen; Severus's mother, Evelyn and Grace Weitts. There were also two or three familiar faces which she recognised as her seniors from Hogwarts. One was from Ravenclaw called Robert Daniel who was a recent passout, the other was from her house Charlotte Pipers, who had graduated when she was in her third year.

The last was the infamous beauty of Hogwarts, a fair skinned extremely beautiful girl and a graduate of Hogwarts. She had graduated two years ago from Hogwarts, however Alice still was able to recall her. Francesca Zabini was calmly looking at them as they entered. Her eyes widened at Severus slightly before they came back to normal state. There were around 20 people in total inside the room. There was one girl in her twenties who for some reason reminded Alice of Bellatrix Black whom she had met during the Pureblood parties. They looked very much same and Alice didn't knew who she was. Suddenly everything made sense about her identity.

"Severus, let's start the meeting" Eileen spoke up looking at him.

Everyone was seated at the chairs and Alice took on the chair next to Evelyn who had gestured for her. Severus went to take the chair in the centre and then proceeded to look at Lucius who was sitting on the right side of his. With a look shared between them, he turned looking at the table full of men and women who were going to be his employees.

"I am Severus Prince or you know me as Mr Steve from the interview. I hope, that you all had read the agreements carefully and have no problems with the offer placed to you. If you have any problems with the terms and conditions then you may voice it now" he spoke up in his business like tone which was so smooth that Alice was surprised at the sheer smoothness and silkiness of voice.

"Mr Prince, I was actually a little confused about the whole secrecy thing about the parts concerning blood oaths" Charlotte spoke up first from two places besides Francesca Zabini.

"You all must have read the secrecy terms and agreements that I had offered. It was based entirely on the secrets of the company which you will be based on. You must have already know how important our secrets are going to be in our field. We want to ensure everything goes well for our company. It had been proven that blood agreements had always been the most successful in keeping the secrets safe. If anyone have problems with it, there is still chance that they could back out now" Severus explained calmly as he pinned everyone with a stare of his own. It was just a completely new side of Severus, which Alice and Eileen were seeing for the first time. Lucius too was surprised because the presence alone Severus radiated now was never seen by him. Francesca meanwhile was thinking about the 360° change in the boy infront of her. A month or two ago, the snivelling boy behind the Mudblood was gone and was replaced by a compleey different personality. Yes she new Severus Snape was skilled but she never thought that he was the Heir Prince and that he had brains enough to start this project. She had an inkling perfectly now about what Project P was going to entail.

"And what exactly we have to do concerning the secrecy of company?" Evelyn asked next going for the unspoken question, it was surely a move by Lucius to satisfy down the unspoken questions.

"The Project as you can guess will be related to Potions mainly for now. There will be many recipes, there might be some charmworks and magical secrets which come under the same. The workings and everything about the company will be coming under that. You will unable to be tell anything that falls under stuff which could be used against the company. Many a times, if we start this there will be attempts on spying, there must be no gap in security on our part if we do this because leaked secrets risk dangerous threats for us. If anyone wants to walk out now, they can because this is the last call for it. Without the explicit permission, it will be impossible for you to disclose the personal identity of another person of the company and details regarding them. We will begin the procedure for signing of agreements now, the agreements will be placed under a secured Gringotts vault where noone could tamper with it" Severus spoke up as he called out for anyone who wanted to back down. There was no backing down now, everything was set.