Author's Note: You may remember parts of this from a 2007 Work-In-Progress; I've been massively revising with intent to complete.

Smart Girls are Easy (and Other Humiliations)

Zigadenus

Chapter the First

Cissy set the paper down with one of the delicate sniffs that heralded moral indignation. Her own morality, to be sure, but when something stood in contravention to her finely honed perceptions of the Wizarding World, that sound, accompanied or not by the faint moue of her lips, was a blazing signpost of her aesthetic and philosophical discontent.

"Darling?"

"This Skeeter woman. I'm not convinced the Prophet isn't taking a cut of those books. Surely these never-ending reports of her slumming with the Muggles simply cannot be popular enough on their own to boost subscriptions. I really can't see any circumstance under which we'd need to know what she's wearing every day of her latest book signing tour.

"And a half-page photo, no less. She's had her nose charmed, it looks like. And a bit of a lift. At least she is dressing rather better. Those foul shoes made my eyes ache."

"They say enough money will improve anyone's wardrobe."

"That's surely true. If you haven't any taste, you had better be rich. It's so tawdry. Do you know, Lucius, I always admired Augusta Longbottom. That woman has enough conviction to stand by her deplorable fashion sense, in spite of her Gringotts vault. But Skeeter. So… nouveau-riche." She tsked in apparent dismay.

He could always trust Cissy to be upset about the things that mattered: Never mind that Rita had largely deserted the Wizarding World after the Triwizard Tournament, only to reappear as a Muggle children's author, laden with a heavily embroidered tale largely cut from whole cloth, which was presently flying off bookshelves as if someone had cast Wingardium leviosa. Never mind the ongoing libel suits (he had one pending), which were being tied up in the Wizengamot by investigations into the very real danger of her violating the ICW Statute of Secrecy despite all the embroidery and bullshit. No, Cissy was upset because the Daily Prophet was treating their former all-star investigative journalist as a celebrity. Little people should know their place.

To be completely honest (he tried not to be as a general rule), he subscribed to her general thesis whole-heartedly. But on the other hand, this was Rita. For all that she was unsubtle, gauche, and Gryffindor, they had enjoyed a rather amusing flirtation of some standing. He slightly regretted the need to Teach Her A Lesson, because on the whole, he appreciated how utterly ruthless she'd been in carving out a Muggle empire on the backs of a world still stumbling from socio-political turmoil. It wasn't elegant, but you couldn't deny that she'd been effective.

He doubted Cissy could be persuaded of that, however. For Cissy, the ends certainly could justify the means, but only if both evidenced a modicum of class, and a proper understanding of the appearance of decorum, if not respectability. Which reminded him, "Have you decided if you're going to Dumbledore's memorial?"

"Do you know, I think I shall. I've that lovely new Chanel. The bodice cut is just daring enough that the society pages are apt to question its propriety. But what better way to honour a Muggle-lover than Muggle high fashion?" She fluttered her eyelashes.

"Chérie, one day being blonde and beautiful will fail to cover that incorrigible sense of humour, and you'll be the downfall of us all."

"Don't be silly Lucius. No one credits a beautiful woman with more than a smattering of brain cells. And I've no intention of ever losing these looks." She affected a pat at her elegantly coiled hair, "Do you know, that's one of the best arguments in favour of clever witches inviting premier potioneers over as often as we do." Because an occasional dinner party advertised that you were a client, whereas cocktails, card games, and a midnight lunch hinted at social equality, and kept down any speculation that a dewy visage might be augmented with a little help from one's friends. He smirked at her, and wondered, briefly, how she'd have coped if Snape had lost his trial and been tossed back to Azkaban indefinitely. She'd weathered his own incarceration phenomenally well, but then he couldn't brew a skin tonic if his life depended on it, so one could argue that she'd only had to suffer social embarrassment, not inconvenience.

"Speaking of our duplicitous, back-stabbing little friend, what do you think of this Lily Evans rumor that Rita's putting about? You probably knew Severus better in school than anyone else, is there anything to it?"

"Oh, I shouldn't think so. They certainly couldn't have been childhood friends the way Skeeter would have it - he had that horrid northern accent when he first came to Hogwarts, don't you remember? And Evans was from Milton Keynes. I'll always remember that, it was so typically bourgeois and Muddy, and she was so terribly proud to have come from a New City, which I do think showed a deplorable lack of taste. Marked out what she was in an instant. If she'd only known to keep it quiet, she might've passed, she looked well enough, and had, oh, a certain rude glamour I suppose. I'm not really surprised she attracted male attention, by all account she wasn't exactly, ahem, restrained with her affections.

"Still, I always did credit Severus as having a good deal more pride than to sniff after… well. But then we all thought the same of James Potter, and that was a good family, once. So I suppose you never know."

"Well it unnerves me, to be frank."

"Hmm? Well I agree it would be rather unsavory if it were true…"

"No, no. Well, yes I mean, that's a given. Moreover, it's more than a bit pathetic, don't you think? I mean, can you really imagine our Severus moping about, angsting over some dead witch for twenty years? It just beggars belief. Double agent doesn't surprise me, I've always pegged him as a grasping, uppity, shifty little sod. Granted, I did think it was more in the vein of healthy self-interest, and that he was planning to double-cross us, not Riddle." He took a bite of toast as if it had personally offended him, chewed rapidly, and swallowed the remains of his diatribe along with the marmalade. "But that's neither here nor there. What I meant, Cissy, was that it's… hmm. Disconcerting, not quite knowing how someone's strings are arranged. I don't like waking up to find that I haven't the faintest idea how best to make someone dance to a more pleasing tune."

"And do you think Severus Snape ever danced for you, love?"

"Oh, well, no, but I did feel that I understood which way the wind blew in that quarter. Now. Now!? I mean, if you'd asked me to lay odds, there isn't the slightest chance I'd have credited him with returning to Hogwarts, for instance. He hates teaching with a passion. And yet where is he?" He could feel a frown tugging his eyebrows and consciously relaxed his face. It was no good letting Snape get under his skin. Equanimity, that was the key. Good to keep in practise, good to always keep the bastards from realising just how perfectly annoyed they, or in this case, Snape, made him. No one feared a man who couldn't keep control of his emotions, after all. It was probably where Riddle had gone so terribly wrong. Poor misguided idiot.

"I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, though. His being back at Hogwarts, I mean. I do worry about Draco." Cissy sighed. It did interesting things to her slim chest. Which in turn did interesting things to his trousers. Which interesting things were promptly deflated by further musings about poor sweet Draco, and how would he cope, and perhaps it would be a mistake after all, sending him back.

"Cissy, sweetheart," he tried a stab at salvaging the morning, "He's a splendid, brilliant lad. He went a bit astray, but I do believe that with a good showing of public remorse, his housemates will forgive him his lapse in judgement. Yes, he wallowed shamefully in the shadows of Bella's avaricious pandering to that megalomaniac, but better sense did eventually prevail."

"I do wonder where we failed him, though. From the outset, it really does look too much like what it was: a rebellious child who can't discern the difference between insane fanaticism, and our paying lipservice to a political movement that Riddle betrayed." She'd pursed her lips, nostrils delicately flaring. This was an old, deep wound, one that was rarely salved by the knowledge that many of their peers had also fallen into the madman's tangle before realising that his early rhetoric of 'visions of a unified Wizarding World' hid a snarl of mental instability, hunger for power, disregard for convention, ruthlessness, sociopathy, and obsession. Which, it had to be said, where not necessarily bad things in a political figurehead… except for the mental instability. It ultimately made figureheads intractable to manipulation, and when it translated to maiming and torture, well, there went any veneer of respectability. Particularly when none of it had benefited them a whit. They'd signed up with Riddle to remake their world, and by the end of it found themselves branded terrorists – inept terrorists, just to make the sting worse. It was rather like the fine print on a slightly dodgy contract: Slytherin House expected you to be the one writing it, not belatedly discovering that oh, this wasn't quite what you thought you were getting into.

"I think the fact that the scales did eventually fall from his eyes is a credit to the way we raised him. With a little judicious spin-doctoring, he'll be able to recoup any loss in social standing he suffered. And his very public defense of Potter-fils during the fracas at Hogwarts can be made to work in his favour. I shouldn't worry about him, love, he's got to make his own way in this world." He leaned towards her, and placed a gentle kiss on the angle of her jaw. She sighed, and tilted her head. By his reckoning, he had a full three hours 'til the governor's meeting, and the sunlight glinting on the china had a particularly hopeful cast. "Shall we take a turn about the roses, love?"

She smiled, a covetous promise lurking in her eyes. It was just enough to make him wonder, as he offered her his arm, if she hadn't had a bit of a dalliance in mind from the start. Manipulated, or manipulator? He mentally shrugged. A spouse was a nice sort of possession to have, and they'd long ago settled on mutual ownership.

"All the scum's come creeping out of the woodwork today, looks like." Ron nodded his chin towards an elegantly robed wizard, who was casually stroking his beard while posing for a photographer. "Everyone's favourite novelist. Did you like the way Skeeter wrote him up? Shame she didn't tell the truth on that one, really. Can't believe that perv was a teacher here, even if it was just Muggle Studies."

"Lockhart? Watch out if McGonagall sees he's here." Harry smirked.

"I've half a mind to tell her. And he brought her, too." Hermione looked like she'd bit a lemon. She'd been like that a lot, lately. "I can't believe they'd be so tasteless as to use Dumbledore's memorial as a photo-op. And coming back to Hogwarts!"

Ron snickered, and hastily turned it into a cough as Hermione glared at him. He elbowed Harry, and they fell back behind her, "They probably wanted to try out the Library, or maybe a table in the Great Hall. 'Cos a broom closet just isn't the poshest place to be caught with your pants down."

"Shame, really," Harry opined, "It's almost too bad we couldn't have got rid of more teachers that way."

"What, would you have done the honours with Umbridge, then?"

"Urgh."

"Still, might've done for Snape. When I think of all those years that miserable fuck tormented us… we should've just had Hermione show up to his office in her knickers."

"That's sick, Ron."

"Well, she's the one who won't shut up about the greasy bastard. I swear she's been crushing ever since the trial. And if he'd pulled a Lockhart years ago, Dumbles might have actually lived through it all."

He realised his error almost immediately: Harry's eye were narrowed, and his harsh whisper was pure venom, "Goddamn it, Ron, I told you, the last thing I want to talk about is fucking Snape." Harry quickened his pace to catch up to Hermione.

Ron kicked at a clump of grass, sighed, and lengthened his stride. Between Hermione canvassing for Snape like he was a bloody house elf, and Harry steeped in whatever bizarre combination of guilt and malice he was nurturing, he'd gotten thoroughly sick of it all. And he damn well didn't believe that Dumbledore had gotten it so badly wrong, and he doubted if Harry believed it either. If you couldn't trust Dumbledore to know his way around magic… And they had tracked down and killed all the Horcruxes, hadn't they? Well, with help. But it stood to reason that if Dumbledore hadn't really killed the thing in the ring, his instructions for doing in the rest of them shouldn't have worked either. Snape had pulled a fast one over the Wizarding World, and the half-year he'd spent in Azkaban didn't even begin to approach justice. Euthanasia, my ruddy arse, he thought again, for perhaps the thousandth time since the slimy git's trial.

"You're pissed to the gills, aren't you." He might have been commenting on the weather. Cloudy with a chance of photographers, breaking in the afternoon as the speeches got underway.

"Hardly. Just up to my pectoral fins." She pulled the flask from her pocket, and reached to press it into his hand. It was the first time she'd touched him since That Night. "You look like you could use a pull. How're you holding up, Severus?"

He glanced about, tipped back the flask, and coughed a bit. "Fine, just fine. Had a lovely little holiday on an island in the North Sea. Very restorative." His old flippancy was lacking, the words fell like ash. She put her hand on his arm, and he positively twitched, before straightening and squaring his shoulders. She didn't know which reaction pulled harder at her heartstrings. He'd never forgive her if she succumbed to the sudden longing to fold his gangly body into a hard embrace.

"But enough about me, how are you?" All false cheer and sarcastic joviality. It hurt.

But she could take a hint; they were Hogwarts Staff, after all, and Staff understood about presenting a united front of unflappability. They'd made it through everything else, they were certainly going to make it through this dog-and-pony memorial. She took another swig of scotch for good measure. It was, after all, going to be a long and tedious ceremony. "Tired. Furious. Mostly tired."

"Why furious?"

"Rita Skeeter's Muggle muck-raking. I don't know how much you've heard about it, have you read any of her books? No, I suppose you wouldn't have done.

It's one thing here, where everyone knows she's writing pure trash, but out amongst the Muggles? I've had the most damnable time with the Hogwarts visits this year, trying to convince parents that no, we haven't had any Tolkein-esque battles on the school grounds, no, there have never been any Muggleborn concentration camps, no, Riddle never did have any influence in the school, no, the Headmaster wasn't murdered in a hostile terrorist take-over…" She trailed off, realising that her tongue was going in entirely the wrong direction.

"No, he was just a bumbling idiot, who couldn't bear to keep his fingers off obviously Dark objects." His lips had thinned to a repressive line. He turned away from her, looking out across the lake, but probably, she thought, not seeing it.

"It was important, what you did." She said it softly. "I think, even towards the end, he must have known what it would cost you."

"Bollocks, Minerva," He lowered his voice, his eyes flashing dangerously. It was the most expression she'd seen since they'd dragged him, screaming, into the boat. "You and I both know he fucked around with Riddle's Horcruxes for years, he courted disaster every step of the way. Was he even sane, was he even Albus, when he lowered the goddamn wards? I looked in his eyes, Minerva. It was," He swallowed hard, "I didn't have a choice."

"I know that." She gave in to poor judgement, and put an arm around his shoulders. After a moment, she felt some of the tension dissipate from his muscles.

"Do you know, I can still smell him? Those last few hours, when we should have been after those fucking artefacts, instead of trying to bring him back. It would have saved us all a year of misery if I'd just strangled him with his goddamn beard. Or if I had just levelled a Killing Curse at him."

"Severus, we didn't know why they were on the grounds, we didn't know Albus even had those foul things –"

"I knew. I guessed."

"No one would have believed you. You know that. And we thought he might recover, none of us realised that he'd brought the wards down himself. Well, yes, Severus, you said, but obviously, none of us were listening to you, I didn't even think to check the ward crystals, and then Potter was chasing after the Death Eaters, and Draco Malfoy was bleeding out, and by that time …"

"By that time, it was obvious to the meanest intellect that whatever was in Albus Dumbledore's body wasn't Albus Dumbledore. And none of you lot were going to do a fucking thing about it."

She gave his shoulders a squeeze, released him, and passed him back the flask. "We should go and find seats."

"Because heaven forfend we don't appear devoted to the Late, Great Dumbledore and his Final Sacrifice."

She rewarded this effort towards his usual sarcasm with a weak smile. "At the very least, we should go and ensure that Gilderoy Lockhart isn't fornicating with students across the tomb," she tucked the empty flask back into her robes, "And the sad thing is, I don't even think I'm joking."

They walked in silence across the scarred Quidditch pitch. She noted that new grass was starting to erupt from the furrows where Rolanda and Hagrid had plowed down the craters and gashes left by spells that missed their marks. By the time term started, there wouldn't be any physical reminders left of blood soaked dirt, of strewn entrails, of Lucius Malfoy's own son, screaming as his muscles were torn from his bones under the Cruciatus curse, of the Creevey boy sobbing while he cradled his brother's corpse, of that Hufflepuff boy, Macmillan, drowning in his own blood and vomit, of green flames lighting up the desecration of the Ravenclaw Patil girl's face as her features popped and sputtered, melting off her skull –

"I said, are you finished with the Hogwarts visits, then? Minerva, you're a million miles away."

"Thinking. I think too damn much. Remembering Riddle making examples of our students."

There was a long, taut silence, and their progress slowed. She could hear the distant din of so-called mourners, as they gathered near Dumbledore's tomb; the sound was preternaturally loud, and the sweet drift of early clover suddenly cloying. "Min. Min, it wasn't your fault, you have to know that." Thin, cold fingers twisted around her own, and she swallowed hard, squeezing back. That Severus, so broken, so damaged, should be trying to comfort her was almost too much.

"I know. I do know that. I know more people would have died had we resisted, I know our losses would have been heavier. But they're still dead, they're still—Severus, I was Headmistress, it was my duty to protect this school, and I stood aside, I would have thrown open the doors of the Great Hall for that madman, anything –"

His fingers tightened. "Sssshhh. He knew what would make you hurt. You did the only thing you could."

She pressed her lips firm against incipient hysterics. She knew these things, she did.

"He wanted into the school, and nothing could have stood in his way."

A long, shaky breath. Another. "Except the Order."

"Except the Order. More by luck and stupidity than anything else." There was a dark current of bitterness there, one she had no intention of probing the depths of.

They resumed their progress towards the memorial. It seemed tawdry. There were photographers and reporters flitting everywhere, popinjay Ministry officials preening about; even amongst the Order members there were cracks marring the solemnity: there was Nymphadora Tonks, twitching her hair a shade lighter, while Remus Lupin smiled indulgently. The Weasleys were subdued, though. Molly and Arthur always stood so that their bodies touched, when she saw them anymore. Their eldest kept his face down, or turned aside. There was an obvious hole, where two of the other boys should have been standing, and the twins' faces were rigid and somber. She took a deep breath, and started to look away. Potter and his compatriots were approaching the group; a smile lit Ginevra's face, a small answering grin blossomed on Potter's. Life went on, she supposed.

Severus' reluctance to move any closer to the Order was palpable. His shoulders had hunched again, and he was gazing up at the castle with a studied nonchalance she'd come to interpret as the height of affectation. Lull him into the notion? She followed the line of his gaze, "I was surprised, in the end, you know, that the school didn't sustain much damage."

"Riddle was insane, not illogical."

"Well it's obvious he wanted access to Hogwarts without a firefight, but what do you mean 'illogical'? Albus always said Riddle intended Hogwarts as the seat of his power; what does logic have to do with that? You don't think… A Horcrux, Severus? Could he have stored one here? But Albus said there were only seven, we accounted for all of them… Severus?"

His narrowed eyes glittered, and he gave a nearly-imperceptible shake of his head. She turned, and saw that the Minister was approaching. "Were I you, Minerva," he said out the corner of his mouth, "I might want to carefully consider the source of my assumptions."

Author's Note: Plot Bunnies need a diet high in reviews if they are to out-compete Dissertation Hares.