Severus arrived at a muddy field near Ottery St. Catchpole around mid-morning on a day late in the summer, soon after his discharge from St. Mungo's. Despite the morass of shoe-sucking mud that appeared to surround him, the ground felt strangely firm beneath his feet. A nearby patch of cow dung did not have any scent, though it looked fresh and he was downwind. He peered at the copse of trees from which he had emerged after Apparating here, searching for telltale distortions, a mismatch of the line of the horizon. His neck still didn't allow much lateral movement, and he had to turn his entire body to see what was about himself. When he finished turning completely, Bill Weasley was striding towards him.
They gazed at each other impassively for a moment, and Bill said, "We should have known the head of Slytherin House wouldn't be killed by a snake."
Severus replied, "Yes. When I wasn't preoccupied by all the bleeding, I was reflecting on the irony of my demise." He nodded at Bill. "Likewise, I was surprised to hear you'd survived. Greyback insisted he'd killed you."
"We blood traitors aren't so easy to kill," replied Bill waggishly. He gestured with his wand, and the Burrow shimmered into appearance as the surrounding wards dropped away.
"Mum will make you eat something," said Bill, restoring the wards as the two men walked towards the house. "She was insulted by your refusal of all those meals at Grimmauld Place."
"I had that reputation as a bastard to maintain," said Severus, allowing a note of petulance to enter his voice.
Bill raised an eyebrow and pursed his scarred lips. "You played your part well," he retorted, pulling open the door, gesturing for Severus to enter. Bill stayed outside, fumbling in pockets of his robes before stepping around the corner of the house and out of sight.
Molly Weasley stood on the other side. "Welcome to my home Severus." She smiled warmly, if a little uneasily, and smoothed her robes with her hands. "There are certain precautions we are still taking." She pointed her wand at his face.
He nodded, spreading his empty hands.
She swallowed hard. "What did you say after George ... and Fred left the school in their sixth year?"
He replied quietly, "I told you they were talented Potions makers, and I would accept them into my Newt class if they should return for their seventh year." He looked away. "Molly...I am sorry for your loss."
She pulled open the door, and he allowed himself to be dragged into her embrace. "Thank you, Severus. For everything." She led him to the table in the nearby kitchen, where the room's only other occupant was regarding him curiously with bright green eyes.
"I've set an Imperturbable Charm," said Molly, patting Harry on the shoulder, and she trotted up the stairs, the sound of her footfalls vanishing as the charm closed in behind her retreat.
The two men regarded each other across the table.
"You really said Fred and George were talented Potions makers?" asked Harry.
"What do you think Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes were?" retorted Severus.
Harry nodded. "That makes sense. Would you like some tea?" he asked, too brightly. "You need to mind the sugar – George Transfigured some of it into powdered carbon dioxide, so when it hits hot tea..."
"You have something of mine," said Severus abruptly.
"Of course, of course." Harry fumbled in the pockets of his jeans and brought out a Muggle coin. With a touch of his wand, it transformed into a flask containing a misty swirling substance. The mouth of the flask was sealed over with a distortion of hardened molten glass.
"I didn't show the memories to anybody," said Harry quickly. "Not even to my closest..."
"You didn't have to tell anybody anything," said Severus in a low voice. "Dumbledore left encrypted memories to the Unspeakable in the Order. Memories that person would be able to see upon the Dark Lord's death, that would serve to exonerate me, on the off chance that I should survive the war."
Harry gazed steadily back at the Potions Master, quelling an impulse to cringe like a first-year who'd botched a simple potion. "How would I even know that?" he replied with forced calm. After years of despising this man, culminating in the months of white-hot rage that drove him between Dumbledore's death and the final battle, he thought his capacity for anger had burned itself out. But maybe the former Death Eater would surprise him.
"I gave you those memories thinking I was a dead man," continued Severus. "Those memories were for you, and only you, so that you would finish the job."
"By revealing what was in the memories, I thought I was redeeming..."
"Why the hell would I care what people thought?" the Potions master hissed. "If not for the actions of my meddlesome father, I'd be dead."
Harry started to protest, but Severus wouldn't let him speak. "Once again, it's all about you, Potter. You would feel badly about everybody believing I was evil for ever and ever. You couldn't live with that."
"But it goes the other way, doesn't it?" retorted Harry. "If you were dead and therefore didn't care what people thought, then what does it matter whether people know you loved my mother?" Harry folded his arms.
"They were not your memories, to do with as you liked," countered Severus, his pale face pinking.
"I know that," said Harry. "That's why I didn't show them to anybody."
"You didn't have to, did you? No, you only told everybody all about what you saw. I can't pick up the newspaper or turn on the Wizarding Wireless without discovering new revelations about myself. I can't walk down Diagon Alley without people asking me about my mother – or yours." He paused, his throat hurting, and sipped tea, sighing inwardly. After weeks of the enforced boredom of convalescence, he had actually been looking forward to this confrontation with Potter. But whenever he became angry these day, it dissipated as pain and weakness asserted itself, and he ended feeling no more than a sense of frustration at the futility of his current life. The terrible mission that had been a rod across his back for nearly two decades was over, and when it ended, so did his sense of purpose. Looking at Potter across the table, he wondered if he, Potter, felt the same. Asking was out of the question, of course.
Harry grinned. "Welcome to my world, Professor."
Severus sneered and took out his wand, wordlessly directing a spell at the lump of glass stoppering the flask of memories. The distorted glass softened, melted, and straightened, solidifying as an open flask neck. Severus restored the memories into his head, wincing as the full emotional impact of these memories spread out among the depth and breadth of everything else he had ever lived. By the time he finished, his hand was trembling slightly and Harry looked discreetly away as his former second-worst enemy stood and paced about the kitchen, taking deep breaths to calm himself.
"I'm sorry I can't return your mother's Potions book, Professor," said Harry tentatively. "It must have burnt up in the fire."
"I fetched it months ago, Potter."
"I...erm..."
"People were hiding objects in that room for a millennium." He scowled at Harry. "Every generation of students thinks they are the first to discover it, and continue to think so even when standing surrounded by heaps of objects that have been there since before Chaucer." Walking to the foot of the staircase, he lowered the Imperturbable Charm and spoke up the stairs. "Thank you for the tea, Molly. I must be off."
Harry stood, toppling his chair. "I used Expelliarmus. That you taught me."
Severus half-turned, and for a brief moment, Harry thought he saw a genuine smile flicker across Severus' face.
"Ironic, isn't it, Potter," said Severus thoughtfully, "that three of you would cast it on me and I would only suffer a concussion, but from just one of you casting it, the Dark Lord would die."
"Well...you didn't cast a killing curse on us that we were hoping to deflect, Professor."
"It's not that I didn't think of it," retorted Severus.
Harry snorted. "That's ridiculous. You always protected students, and what's more, you never really hated me. You only wished you did." Harry said it on the spur of the moment, but from Severus' reaction, he realized he'd stumbled onto the truth, as the Potions Master gripped the back of a chair and turned whiter than Harry thought possible.
"Professor..."
"Stop calling me that."
"What do I call you, anyway?"
"Call me whatever you like. I won't be around to hear it."
"Where will you go? What will you do?"
"First, I'm off to Hogwarts. The Headmistress is having trouble with a sticky drawer in her desk. After that..."
"A sticky drawer in the Headmistress' desk?" repeated Harry, frowning.
Molly Apparated to the foot of the staircase. "Your meeting with Minerva isn't until two o'clock. You may as well stay for lunch, Severus." Bill, Ginny, Ron and Hermione, acting nonchalant, came padding slowly down the staircase.
"I won't impose on your hospitality any further, Molly." Severus ignored the new arrivals. All he wanted to do was Apparate somewhere where there was no one to look at him; no one to stare speculatively, their manifestly false expressions of concern an open window on their simple-minded and prurient curiosity as they asked their intrusive personal questions. These days, any questions people asked him were personal, even those coming from Aurors.
And the people like Molly, who really cared about him, were worse. The weight of all this sympathy was filling up in his chest like a slow-running faucet.
"You've been around Death Eaters too much," said Bill mildly. "You need to get used to being around normal people." But Bill's gaze said, Don't offend mum's hospitality.
"There's no such thing as normal people," countered Severus. But Bill was right, actually. His entire social life, such as it was, had consisted of Death Eaters since his early twenties. And Death Eaters' wives. And their daughters. He shoved these thoughts away as if he were hiding them from a powerful and malevolent Legilimens. Besides, it wasn't as if he had anything else to do for the next two hours. "Since you insist, I'll grace you with my charming presence at lunch."
Severus braced himself for an awkward meal, where everybody would try and make him comfortable by chattering incessantly, being overly solicitous, offering him more food than he could eat in a week of lunches. But to his relief, they were all preoccupied with their own dramas. And everyone, including himself, was very hungry.
"Is it true the goblins are completely re-thinking security since we broke in?" asked Hermione, reaching for another biscuit.
Bill chuckled. "You know I can't talk about that."
"The old pureblood families are insisting on it," said George. "The ones not in Azkaban, at least."
"And how would you know this?" asked Ginny.
"I'm a businessman," replied George loftily. "I keep abreast of fiduciary matters in my community."
"Overheard it in the shop, did you?" said Hermione. "The wealthy old families must be horrified, what with a Mudblood breaking into a vault guarded by a dragon."
"Charlie has always been unhappy about the treatment of those dragons," remarked Molly.
"Don't call yourself that!" snapped Severus. "Insulting yourself for the sake of a joke..."
"Do you see anybody smiling in here?" asked Hermione sweetly.
Conversation ceased as everyone looked alternately from Severus to Hermione.
"I have claimed the word," declared Hermione, insouciantly flipping back her shaggy hair. "No one can use it against me again."
Severus continued to frown. "Contriving an intellectual justification for an insult doesn't make it any less demeaning, or take power away from bullies and racists."
Hermione replied, "Perhaps, but if bullies and racists want to demean me, they'll have to come up with other words."
"By the way, did you ever punish Draco for calling her a Mudblood?" said Ron.
"Ron, we all know how he had to keep up appearances," countered Harry.
"I am capable of defending my actions myself, thank you, Mr Potter," retorted Severus.
Molly said, "Some of us will come to your defence, Severus, whether you like it or not. And if you ask me, strict discipline in the Potions classroom didn't do anybody any harm."
"Molly, I don't care what people..."
"You mean, it was all an act? You've been secretly nice all along?" Ron interrupted.
"Don't be rude, Ron," chastised Molly.
But Severus grinned. "You are correct, Mr Weasley. By vanquishing the Dark Lord, your friend has made it possible for me to reveal my true personality to the world. When I have fully recovered my strength, you'll see me going about Diagon Alley, patting the children on their dear little heads, and passing out sweets." He stood, nodded to Molly, and fled before he could hear any more of their grudging expressions of gratitude, grovelling false apologies, or damn questions.
Walking up to the castle from the border of the anti-Apparation wards, he paused by Hagrid's newly-reconstructed hut, ostensibly to catch his breath, but mainly to survey the damage. He'd read everything about the battle and its aftermath in the Daily Prophet, supplemented by detailed reports sent by Minerva, enclosing Hogwarts internal documents on the state of the castle and what was needed for its repair, prefaced by personal notes asking about the progress of his recovery and dropping broad hints as to how valued his expertise would be, given his extensive knowledge of Dark Spells, and suchlike.
He resumed a slow pace up towards the castle. But as he drew nearer, the extent of the damage became more clearly apparent, and brought him to a standstill.
Construction elves swarmed over the structure, their buttercup yellow tricorn hats disappearing and reappearing as they Apparated about, lifting blocks, mortar, cornices, flying buttresses and so forth, and spelling them into place.
Parts of the roof shone with a bright copper gleam, garishly incongruous in patches against a backdrop of those parts of the old green roof that could be salvaged after the battle. The old and new colours shimmering into each other bespoke of protective magic, ancient spells with their roots in antiquity that had been newly placed on the restored areas. Similarly, on the walls of the castle, newly repaired areas blended with weathered brownish-grey stone in starbursts of bold pink.
Filius Flitwick paused in charming the stones being lifted to the remaining large gap and waved to Severus, approaching at a speed astonishing for so small a person.
"Severus, I should like to apologize profusely for my behaviour over the past year."
For the first time in he couldn't remember how long, Severus put back his head and laughed. Then stopped abruptly, putting a hand to his neck, wincing.
Flitwick stepped closer. "Now I really am sorry, Severus."
Severus aimed his wand at his neck and muttered a spell. "I'm fine. And I am happy to see you, Flitwick. I should like to collect that bottle of elf-made cognac."
Flitwick grimaced. "I didn't forget our wager, Severus. But technically, you did die."
Severus snorted. "If you're going to play the pedant, Filius, my heart stopped, but my brain did not die. And here I stand, capable of enjoying cognac. Technically speaking."
"No magic could have saved you," countered Flitwick.
"I don't recall, 'if you're dead to the point where magic can't save you but Muggle resuscitation can, it counts as dead' being part of our wager. I am not deceased, demised, pushing up daisies, shuffled off this mortal coil. Ergo, you owe me a bottle of staggeringly expensive cognac. And I'd best be off to see Minerva."
"Fine then," said Flitwick. "And I'd best get back to work." With a flourish, Flitwick gestured with his wand, and eight blocks lifted together, fitted tightly like matching puzzle pieces, and slotted into a matching space remaining in a damaged wall, the area glowing with residual magic, elves applying further protective spells with trowels.
"Severus."
He was already walking away, and stopped, turned.
"I just have to fetch it from Rosmerta. Drop by on Friday, I need to go to Gringotts on Thursday anyway.
"That would be acceptable," said Severus. "But if I may say, you've had four months."
"Yes, well, some of us haven't been lying about in a hospital bed, being administered to by Mediwitches. Some of us have been busy." He turned to the construction elves. "You may go to lunch now. And don't return sooner than one hour. You don't serve this castle properly by doing manual labour on an empty stomach." To Severus, he said, "I want to walk with you."
The two men walked slowly towards the castle, pausing at times while Flitwick pointed to areas that had been restored or modified.
"I may lend a hand in the repair of the Come-And-Go Room," said Severus pensively. "Minerva said everybody was having trouble sorting that out. I have some ideas."
Flitwick nodded. "Whoever taught that boy Fiendfyre without the counterspell has a lot to answer for."
"He may well have been taught the counterspell," mused Severus. "In my experience, that boy and his fellow Malfoy minion retained about fifty percent of what they were taught. If they were lucky."
"If it wasn't for Draco, those two would have been going about in mastodon skins, I dare say."
Severus chuckled, but Flitwick looked grim. "Minerva is pretty unhappy about your...little deception. She feels insulted that..."
"Really, what choice did we have?" snapped Severus. "The woman wears her heart on her sleeve and has no Occlumentic skills to speak of. It was bad enough when Hagrid figured it out, but at least Hagrid is immune to most spells and had the sense to flee when he couldn't maintain the deception any more. Minerva would always stand and fight, even against hopeless odds, and her best defence against questioning is changing into a different species." He glowered down at Flitwick. "You nearly pushed it too far. If you and Minerva had persisted in duelling with me at the time I was fleeing, I might have been forced to..."
"It would have been awkward," said Flitwick, nodding.
"Awkward? You call that, 'awkward?' Bad enough that I couldn't save..." He flushed, stopped speaking and started walking more quickly.
Flitwick had to break into a brief run to catch up. "Charity?" he breathed, staring up at the taller wizard.
Severus stopped and glared down at Flitwick, his gaze cold and terrible. "None of you really know me. Do not try."
He continued up to the castle, leaving Flitwick standing in his wake.
He called to Severus, "I'll respect that. But most people won't."
Severus slowed his pace as he left the small wizard behind, and paused inside the newly-repaired front door gasping for breath, quelling his feelings of frustration.
Five minutes later, and Severus was standing in the Headmaster's office, looking slightly abashed. The portraits had burst into applause as he'd entered and continued to offer their individual kudos.
"Much as I would have enjoyed your company, I am glad you are not here, on the wall with us," said Dilys Derwent.
"Perhaps someday, you can return more permanently as Headmaster. Your wisdom gained from experiencing both sides of this conflict, and above all, your intelligence, would all serve as a steady rudder for this school, its students, and I dare say, the future of the wizarding world," gushed an effusive Phineas Nigellus. "After the Headmistress has decided to retire, of course," he added hastily, glancing sideways at Minerva.
"No offence taken, Phineas." said Minerva, blocking the view of the portrait behind her desk. But Albus Dumbledore peered around her head, beaming at Severus.
"I had always hoped against common sense that you would survive, Severus," said Dumbledore, his voice choked.
His tone wintry, Severus said, "Dumbledore, I avoided your portrait at St. Mungo's for a reason."
The former Headmaster bowed and departed, disappearing beyond the border of his frame.
"'Headmaster of Hogwarts,' 'Order of Merlin First Class,' 'Minister for Magic.' Every day I hear of a new honour that should be bestowed upon you, Severus. I expect any day to be hearing from La Grenouille Chocolatiers, wanting your photograph for a Chocolate Frog card. Not that you don't deserve it, of course." Minerva sat in her chair. "I'm not angry at you, Severus." She smiled weakly.
"I wouldn't care if you were," he replied mildly.
"After all, Harry and his friends had nearly as many secrets."
"True. By the way, 'Minister for Magic?' I hadn't heard that one; what madman proposed it?"
"Percy Weasley." Her voice was muffled, as she was bending over, fiddling with a desk drawer.
"Ever the boot-licker." He walked around the desk to see which drawer she was trying to open. "If I did become his boss, he would live to regret it." He pointed to the desk drawer, the lowermost one of four, at which Minerva was now pointing her wand. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you."
"What wards did you put on this drawer, Severus? Filius and I have tried everything we know, and if I may say so, that's considerable."
"Goblin wards. Before you'd succeed in opening that drawer, the desk would undergo a thermonuclear explosion."
"Thermo...?"
"Something that makes Fiendfyre look like a warm summer day. As far as I could find out, the goblins discovered it independently of the Muggles. We really should treat them with more respect."
She straightened up, leaning back from the drawer. "Goblins? Or Muggles?"
"Both, I dare say." He pulled the chair with her in it out of the way, bent down, and opened the drawer after a muttered spell, removing voluminous rolls of parchment.
"What would possess you to cast such a spell inside the walls of this school, Severus?"
"Unlike the Muggle versions, this bomb's explosion would be confined to within the walls of this office." He straightened, his arms full of parchments. "A pity if you'd destroyed these. I didn't have time to make copies." He shrunk the parchments and stuffed them into a leather bag with a shoulder strap, before stepping around to the front of the desk.
"If I may ask, Severus...?" She gestured to the leather bag.
Momentarily he scowled, then his face cleared and he stood as if lost in thought, a finger tracing the outline of his thin lips. "The past year has been very ... stressful for me."
"To say the least!" said Minerva emphatically.
"Right. Well, as a ... diversion, a solace if you will, I started writing down the formulas to all the dark potions I've devised over the years, and the stories around their creation. If I had died, the portraits would have told you how to open that drawer."
"You could have told me how to open that drawer, and I could have sent your parchments by owl post," countered Minerva. "You're looking much improved, but you've not fully recovered your health. There was no need for you to walk all the way up here. You are still much too thin."
"I have always been much too thin. Healer Podmore says I have the metabolism of a hummingbird. But no," shaking his head, "it's not that I don't trust you, Minerva. It's just ... these scribblings are a rough draft – I don't feel comfortable about anybody looking at them quite yet."
"Well, now that you have them, could you at least show me those Goblin wards, and how they work?"
He smirked. "Why would I do that? Besides, I have removed them. You can use that drawer now." He hefted the shoulder bag and started for the door.
"Could you at least tell me what you are calling this book, Severus?" Minerva asked, exasperated.
"Potions and Dark Magic. The title is, I believe, self-explanatory."
"I can think of no one better suited to write a book of that title – must you rush off? I have more questions..."
"Everybody has more questions. I could easily spend the rest of my life answering everybody's questions. And that's not just hypothetical – once the Death Eater trials get started, I'll be the star witness, I dare say. Minister Shacklebolt has already sent me an owl politely requesting that I keep the Ministry apprised of my whereabouts."
"Am I just anybody, Severus? Could you tell me, for instance, if you made that potion that Harry fed to Albus?"
He rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh, removing the shoulder bag and dropping it to the floor. Minerva conjured a black leather wingback chair and Severus slumped into it, briefly covering his eyes with one hand before facing her.
"I have a bit of time," he said. "I'm meeting a literary agent, then briefly with a solicitor, who is helping me stop Rita Skeeter from writing that book about my life. My father actually was talking willingly to her. I don't know what he was thinking."
Minerva started to speak, but he held up a hand. "The way the Daily Prophet goes on about it, you would think there were no dark Potions makers before me. I've been credited with devising a Potion that was invented six hundred years ago, a fact they could easily have discovered with minimal research. That said, the answer to your question is yes: I did invent and brew that potion Potter fed to Dumbledore." He raised his eyebrows. "You're not surprised."
She shrugged. "It's been known since the first war that you made potions for Voldemort."
"Right. Well, the people who say, in my support, that Potter is as much to blame for Dumbledore's death as I am are only half correct."
"I always believed," said Minerva thoughtfully, "that you discouraged the use of wands in your Potions class to discourage the surreptitious brewing of Dark Potions."
He nodded. "Many Dark Potions require spells to transform them into their most malevolent forms."
"I do know this, Severus," said Minerva impatiently. "Though I have always thought you took it too far with your disparagement of 'silly wand waving.' Really, Severus?"
He grinned sheepishly. "I suppose if wand waving is silly, that makes me beyond silly." As if in demonstration, he took out his wand and muttered, "Temporis." Checking the time, he said, "I really must be going now. If you want to know any more, you'll have to buy my book."
She stood as he began to walk away. "I imagine you'll donate some copies to our library."
"You'd best put them in the Restricted Section," he replied, and in a flourish of black robes, disappeared down the staircase and into wizard legend.