Author's note: The immediate genesis for this story was the fifth chapter of my story The Girl Who Lived (now archived on my Bar Sira backup account, for those who care), which stated that Severus Snape and Charity Burbage had both been appointed to the Hogwarts faculty in 1982. Later on, as I was reflecting about this, it occurred to me that one could write an interesting story based on this premise, and after a while this came out. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: There might be people in the world crazy enough to think that they own the Harry Potter characters, but I'm not one of them.
Knock-knock.
"Come in," said Severus Snape, mildly annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his toilet by another idle well-wisher. Didn't the senior professors in this place understand that a man needed privacy when he was preparing for a grand banquet?
The door of his office creaked open, and a slender, girlish shadow fell across the desk. Snape groaned in spirit: it was his fellow freshman professor, Charity Burbage of Muggle Studies.
"Less than an hour, Severus," she said with evident excitement. "Less than sixty minutes from now, you and I will be official members of the Hogwarts faculty."
"Yes, we will," said Snape dispassionately. "And so will Caleb Darksome."
Charity laughed. "Yes, the poor dear," she said. "I just checked in on him, and do you know, his hands are trembling so badly he can barely light that pipe of his."
"Well, no-one forced him to take the Defence against the Dark Arts post," said Snape, "and it's rather too late now for him to start taking the rumours about the curse seriously."
Charity blinked. "Do you think that's what's bothering him?" she said. "I thought it was just ordinary butterflies."
Snape rolled his eyes. He had never had a great deal of respect for the Muggle Studies department, and the small amount of grudging admiration Alan Schwarz had won from him had not transferred to his successor. Granted, Professor Schwarz had been no less thoroughly academic than Charity Burbage was – but, somehow, he couldn't quite see Charity Burbage inviting Lucius Malfoy over to tea and daring him to kill her.
"No, Miss Burbage," he said, "I'm fairly sure it's not just ordinary butterflies."
"Well, what do you know," Charity mused. "And here he seemed like such a brave fellow."
She fell silent for a moment, as though pondering this newly-revealed element of kaolin in Caleb Darksome's pedal makeup, and Snape returned his attention to his toilet.
He was looking uncharacteristically well, he thought. He had oiled and slicked back his hair, on the principle of "when life gives you bubotuber pus, make Decomidising Potion", and the effect was as close to nattiness as he had ever come. Then, too, he had splurged on dress robes, and the silken, jet-black folds that lay about his seated form, set off with a green sash to represent his house, gave him an air of confident authority that almost made him share Dumbledore's absurd belief that he was capable of teaching Potions at Hogwarts. He still wasn't going to be winning any male beauty contests, of course – his nose alone would have disqualified him for that – but, even so…
"Are they true?" said Charity suddenly.
Snape sighed. "Are what true?"
"The rumours," said Charity. "That You-Know-Who put a curse on the Defence against the Dark Arts position after Professor Dumbledore denied him a job."
"I haven't the faintest idea," said Snape curtly.
"Oh," said Charity.
She said nothing more, but there was a note in her voice that made Snape turn around and fix her with a cold stare. "Did you think I would?" he said. "Did you think, because I confess to having served the Dark Lord, that I must therefore have been complicit in every outrage that essayed from his wand?"
"I didn't say that!" Charity protested.
"No, of course not," said Snape. "No-one ever says it. McGonagall, Flitwick, Sinistra… none of them would dream of coming right out and saying, 'Get out of our school, Death-Eater filth.' But when they stare at the Headmaster as at a madman when he announces my appointment; when they cross to the other side of the corridor when they see me coming; when they consistently hesitate before using my first name in social settings – when all this is the case, Miss Burbage, it does not take a Legilimens to see into their minds."
"Well," said Charity, "if it comes to that, you can't really blame them for being uncomfortable. After all, you were… well…"
Snape waited for a moment to see if she would finish the sentence, and then said quietly, "Yes. I was."
Charity said nothing.
"I was the willing servant of the most evil wizard of our age, possibly of all time," said Snape. "I have publicly attested to this fact before the proper authorities. I know of several of my former comrades who have not done this, possibly because they could not bring themselves to say the words I have renounced my affiliation with that unspeakable malefactor; they have been cleared of all charges and are now influential members of their communities, while I struggle to obtain modica of respect from a handful of elderly academics. From which facts, the only conclusion I can draw is that speaking the truth is a more heinous offense than murder, torture, or perjury."
He had hoped that the bitter irony of his words would convince his presumptive colleague to drop the subject, but Charity Burbage was not the sort of person to be dissuaded by, or even to necessarily notice, bitter irony. "It's true, then?" she said. "There really are former Death Eaters walking free around Great Britain?"
"Certainly there are," said Snape. "Did you think our justice system was so wise and incorruptible that it would infallibly convict all of the Dark Lord's former servants, while at the same time leaving no innocent man to moulder in Azkaban? I know for a fact that the Crouch Trials erred several times on the side of mercy, and I rather suspect them of making the opposite mistake once or twice as well."
"But then," said Charity, "if you know that these people were Death Eaters, why didn't you testify against them? If the court accepted Karkaroff's testimony, surely it would have accepted yours."
"It might have," Snape agreed. "Or, of course, it might not have, capriciousness being a not unknown component of certain Ministry officials' characters. In any case, I chose not to give them the opportunity."
"But why not?" said Charity.
"That is my own affair," said Snape curtly. (In fact, he had fully intended to testify at several of the Crouch hearings, but had refrained from doing so at the request of Professor Dumbledore, who had felt that this would compromise his usefulness as a double agent should Voldemort ever return. The Headmaster had not, however, given Snape permission to discuss his speculations on this subject with his fellow professor-designate, and Snape would have been disinclined to do so even if he had.)
"But it isn't, Severus," said Charity earnestly. "If these people really were Death Eaters, their continued liberty is a threat to the public safety. You have a duty as a citizen to do what you can to prevent them from harming innocent people; you can't let your private feelings interfere…"
Abruptly, Snape decided that he had had enough. Bad enough to have this woman barge into his dressing-room and strike up these inane conversations, but he was damned if he would tolerate her lecturing him on matters of which she understood not a tithe. "And what, pray tell, do you know about it?" he demanded, rising angrily from his chair and glaring down at her from his full height of 5′8″. "Did you ever testify before the Crouch tribunal? Have you ever stood in that ice-cold chamber and been made to divulge your most desperate memories before a hundred glowering Aurors? Have you ever once, in all your twenty-three years, had to actually put your glittering ideas of Duty and Citizenship and the Public Good into practice, rather than simply talking about them from a safe, comfortable distance?"
He knew perfectly well that he was being unfair to the young woman (who, if it came to that, was actually a year older than he was), but he didn't care. It was not his rational mind that was speaking, but the pent-up rage and frustration of a man who had spent his entire life being told by everyone whose opinion he cared about that he was a moral failure. In Charity Burbage's well-meant exhortation, he could hear, all too plainly, the echoes of his father's Stupid boy, I don't know why I wasted my blood on you; of Lily Evans's You call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus; why should I be any different?; of Dumbledore's You would let two people die, so long as you can have what you want? – even of Voldemort's mocking I had expected better from you, Severus; desiring a Mudblood for your bed… It wasn't that he didn't agree with them. He simply did not want to hear it anymore.
He wasn't sure how he expected Charity to take his outburst. Privately, he would have liked her to crumble into tears and flee the room, but the realistic part of him knew that she was far more likely to draw herself up indignantly and inform him that her own lack of experience had no relevance to the discussion – which was, of course, true. What he certainly did not expect, however, was for her to pale slightly as though touched in a tender place, swallow deeply two or three times, and say, so softly that he almost missed it, "Yes."
Snape blinked. "What?"
"Yes, I did testify before the Crouch tribunal," said Charity. Her voice was curiously strained, as though she was exerting all her willpower to keep it from trembling. "When I was twelve, my parents were killed by a Death Eater raid during the Christmas holidays. We had some prior warning; I managed to hide in their bedroom closet before they broke down the door, and Father told them that I had stayed at school over the holidays. I heard him screaming from the parlour, swearing by everything he could think of that he was telling the truth, before… before they…"
The strain was too much for her, and she broke down in tears, oblivious to Snape's speechless stare. Where had he been when this information was being passed out? Why hadn't anyone thought to tell him that his former comrades had orphaned his future colleague? He would never have laid into the poor girl that way if he had known…
Though, now that he thought about it, he couldn't absolutely swear that the point hadn't been mentioned in Dumbledore's speech to the faculty introducing the new professors-designate. It seemed to him that he might have heard the phrase "smelted for her new task in the furnace of tragedy" come from the Headmaster's mouth recently in some connection. Certainly, he had been so annoyed at the reaction his own nomination had gotten that Dumbledore could have described Caleb Darksome as a filthy blood traitor and he wouldn't necessarily have noticed.
"Well, anyway," said Charity, when she had gotten control of herself again, "after they had finished with… with that, they decided to ransack the house for good measure, and, when they came in to take Mother's jewelry and Father's collection of vouivre eyes, I got a glimpse of their faces. Not a good glimpse, but enough to be able to recognise them when I saw their pictures in the Daily Prophet reports of Death-Eater arrests a decade later – so I wrote to Professor Dumbledore, and he arranged for me to testify against them when they came before Crouch last June. It wasn't easy," she admitted, "but I did it."
"I'm sorry," said Snape sincerely. "I didn't know…"
Charity nodded. "It was during our stop at the Leaky Cauldron after the trial," she said, "that Professor Dumbledore told me he was planning on making me the new Muggle Studies mistress. I told him that I didn't have a jot of experience – that I didn't even have any Muggle relatives that I knew of – but he insisted; apparently Professor Schwarz had always spoken very highly of me, and he thought that the new MS teacher ought to be someone who knew the real-world price of wizardly ignorance about Muggles."
"How like my own nomination," Snape muttered. "When the Headmaster selected me as Potions master, he spent about a minute discussing my qualifications and about a quarter-hour telling me what a fitting atonement it would be for my past actions." And about ten seconds reminding me how proud Lily would be, he added mentally.
"Really?" said Charity. "Well, then, we're sort of the two Babes in the Hogwarts Wood, aren't we?"
"Quite possibly," said Snape, who wasn't about to admit that he didn't know what the expression "Babes in the Wood" might signify.
"Two lost souls," Charity murmured, gazing out the window towards the North Sea. "One the sole survivor of a crime, the other a repentant criminal – and both of them come to the Castle on the Hog's Warts to start their lives over again."
Snape smiled quietly. "You have a very pretty way of putting things, Miss Burbage," he said. "I can understand why Professor Schwarz recommended you."
The young witch turned and beamed at him. "Oh, please, Severus," she said. "Call me Charity."
Before Snape could reply, there was a tap at the door, and Professor Tollers of Ancient Runes poked his bespectacled head inside the room. "Ah," he said with a broad smile. "Getting acquainted, you two, are you?"
Snape shared an amused glance with his colleague. "You could put it that way," he said.
"M'yes," said Tollers. "Well, I just thought I'd let you know that they're getting all set up for the revel downstairs…"
"We'll be down, Reuel, don't worry," Charity said.
Tollers nodded vaguely, and drew the door carefully shut again. As his shuffling footfall receded down the corridor, Charity turned to Severus's mirror and started running a hand through her hair. "All right, now, do I look all right?" she said anxiously. "Do I look… you know, professorial?"
"You look fine," Severus assured her.
There was a moment's silence, broken only by the distant echo of Hagrid's ritual cry to the students on the bank: "Firs' years! Firs' years over here!"
"That's us," said Charity with a smile. "Shall we, Severus?"
Severus bowed. "After you, Charity."
And the two newest members of the Hogwarts faculty left the dressing room, and headed down to the hall where their futures awaited them.
Note: If any of my readers are curious about what happened to Caleb Darksome, they can find the answer in chapter 5 of my story Out of the Water (which, like The Girl Who Lived, is now listed under my "Bar Sira" account).