Notes: A quick ficlet for Crystal, for the prompt "meddle." During HBP.
"You have no idea when to leave well alone, do you," he snarls. "I am entirely capable of taking care of the matter." Severus, flushed with anger, pacing the floor of the headmaster's office.
Dumbledore gazes levelly at him. His expression is not quite accusatory. "Are you, Severus?"
"I am." He sounds too emphatic, he can hear it himself; this is what Albus bloody Dumbledore does to him, makes him into a sullen schoolboy all over again with his inappropriately paternalistic bullshit. "You don't get to tell me that I must murder you but that you have my—my grievingprocess all mapped out for me with scheduled opportunities to take time off from murdering muggles and think about my feelings, thank you for your service and have a nice life." (Fuck you and damn you to hell, he does not say, but thinks it loudly and hopes that Albus is listening.)
"I am telling you no such thing," Dumbledore says mildly. "I am merely suggesting that the period following my death may present you with a number of difficulties, and that a strategy for managing them would be, shall we say, advisable."
He has not moved from his chair the whole time Severus has been pacing and snarling. Severus stares down at him now, and wonders which would be worse: that Albus should understand his feelings and seek to support him in this warped kind of way, now when it is far too late, or that Albus should have misunderstood him entirely and be playing some different game that Severus can't see. Really, he knows, there is nothing about this situation which is not awful, and nothing about the time to follow which will not be worse.
[end]