On the rising of the night, Dumbledore turned on the light and said, "Something is not right."
Warnings/Notes: Body horror is possible. Also the narrator is annoying the crap out of me, and I can't quite tell whether that's just because someone in RL has annoying me in the same way or you're going to want to slap him too.
Either Fawkes or the phonograph was off-key.
The thought roused Albus from a pleasant doze, adrift in a cloud of Haydn and his subconscious's extrapolation of the shipwreck chapter of Tempests and the Triton, suspended in a lovely haze of prosecco. The transition wasn't jarring, and his room was warm.
He wiggled his toes luxuriantly. These were his favourite socks. The demiguise fur had cost him nearly nothing, considering how soft it was and how well it had taken the cheerful medley of red and gold dyes. Demiguise fur could run twenty galleons a pound, since breeders expected it to be used in invisibility cloaks, but Albus had found an old cloak in a muggle second-hand shop (an almost legal donation, as the magic had worn out; he'd seen no need to alert anyone, but his finding it to take away had been serendipitous for the last owner as well as for him) and reduced it to the original fibre.
He did love second-hand shops. He liked to leave little coin-bags with muggle money in them, labelled, 'Not for sale: if you've found me I'm yours,' charmed to reveal themselves only to those who were in grinding need of either a few pounds or the feeling of getting a bit of luck for once. One had to worry that one was doing this in order to feel good about oneself, but he was sure that it did do a bit of good in the world, and was therefore probably not very harmfully self-deluded. Perhaps his envelopes weren't much, but they included the vanishingly rare gift of being string-free.
Neither the joy-sprinkling nor the low costs were the real reason for shopping at such places, though. Albus always tried to do what he could to improve the lives around him, up to and most certainly including hiring people like Pomona who were better at it than he was (at least, he'd conducted her initial interview, he'd recommended her strongly, and since she wasn't being hired as a Head of House at that point, Dippet had been largely content to delegate) and he had plenty of funds. He didn't need to shop there for savings.
Second-hand stores offered what was extremely difficult to find for sale anywhere else: a wide range of fibres suffused with a wide range of passionate history.
Hogwarts liked what could be made from the fibre of second-hand clothes. She was old herself, and trying to knit up her small wounds and embroider away her weariness with store-bought yarn and floss always felt to Albus like casting with his brother's wand. It could be done, but it didn't suit.
Hogwarts had housed every feeling under the sun in her time, including very adult ones as it was only in the last few centuries that she had become exclusively, rather than primarily, a school for children. Stitches made from a material that had been lived in and felt in by thinking, feeling beings seeped right into her, seamlessly bolstered her wards and her stones. Albus didn't like working with fibre full of the more unpleasant feelings, but when his choices had been limited, Hogwarts had taken that work willingly and turned old pain to strength.
On the other hand, works spun from threads that had only lived the life of an animal or a plant, or been made new in a muggle factory, sat uneasily, like a skin graft. They would do for a patch job, but rooms repaired that way were always shabbier than their fellows, and often weaker.
These socks were especially good. He didn't know whose cloak the fur had once made up, but there was more triumph than sorrow clinging to it, and as he had re-spun it into yarn he had felt something strong and indomitable taking shape.
It had to do, Albus believed, with someone thinking the cloak was worthless once the magic was gone, and then its value being rediscovered. Of course, it had become useless for as far as invisibility was concerned, but muggles sold cashmere for up to twenty galleons a pound, depending upon what fashion was doing, and this fur was nearly as soft as that.
They'd been the last thing he'd made as Deputy Head, Head of Gryffindor, Transfigurations Master, before he'd passed the role wholesale to Minerva.[1] It had been very close to Dippet's retirement—so close that Dippet had stepped away from almost all his duties, wound almost all of the custodial magics around Albus's hands—but he had, still, been a Gryffindor.
It wasn't quite right, that a Head of House should hold the magic to knot the castle together, but Armando was a good man, for all their disagreements; a kind man when he could see how to be. Albus had been lucky. He'd had two years' warning, which was more than enough time to learn to card and dye, spin and wind, embroider and knit. By the time Armando retired, Albus had been more than comfortable enough with Helga's thread-magic to do simple knitting without errors which would make weakness, to create simple things that felt right to him.
It was important that what you made with lanomancy felt right, looked right. It didn't have to be fancy. The form didn't matter.[2] You could repair the delicate charms of the Great Hall's ceiling using row on row of the same stitch in the bulkiest and scratchiest of yarn. But you had to know what you were doing with every stitch, you had to know that every stitch was right, and when you put it down you had to know that your time, will, concentration, and magic had come together and finished in something perfect, unified, and strong. If you didn't, they wouldn't.
Learning had been agonizing. Albus had been frankly astonished that anyone but Hufflepuffs ever became a Hogwarts Headmaster or Headmistress without the castle falling down once or twice a year. It had just been so mind-numbingly dull. [3] You couldn't charm needles to do it for you. If you avoided the hard work, you were just making fabric.
Later he'd learned to read patterns—learned different stitches, to make cables, to make clothing more complex than scarves and hats. They had the same mathemagical potential as music: a flexible rhythm that could be twined into a framework for practically anything.
Patterns had enabled him to take pleasure in the long hours of maintenance that every old building needs; knitting had become a complex challenge that had left him with bright, cheerful, comfortable things he could proudly wear or give away. He could feel that the castle was all the stronger for his growing love of the art, just as Helga had intended.
These socks had been his third set of perfect heels, and the first test of his ability to fix the castle. A minor fix, as appropriate for a first attempt; not something that really needed the headmaster's custodial magic—merely a broken window that could have been mended by the elves. One could always rely on seventh-year Gryffindors to play deliberately careless games with their books after the last day of NEWTs.
As tradition dictated, Armando had remained Headmaster for some weeks after the students had left for the summer holiday. He'd walked Albus through all the end-of-year paperwork and spellwork, finished the year out very neatly and comfortably, and only at Midsummer did he nominate Albus to the castle magically and, with its acceptance of his choice, make his retirement official. But at the Leaving Feast, fire-coloured socks cushioning his boots and all the windows whole, Albus had known that he already held Hogwarts in all but name.
He liked to save these socks to change into after the longer or more tedious meetings. They felt good and the colours made him smile (though if he were ever to forget his duty so far as to make Gryffindor-coloured socks for himself now, he wouldn't ask the dye to do all the work of variation), and they reminded him of what it had felt like to be new to the repeating responsibilities that now made him tired. More, they were a reminder that worn-out things like set schedules enacted yearly had value to be found even when they felt entirely used up.
Ordinarily, even after a first-week-of-term meeting when the castle had scarcely had a chance to be worn down by the feet of vibrant children at all, Albus would have put at least half an hour in before bed. Even when there were no repairs to make, the constant strengthening helped, and it was always just as well to get an early start on Christmas gifts.
Especially this year. Smaller bits of winterwear for the regular staff was quickly managed, but he liked to make something significant for the DADA professor and anyone else who was new.
A fisherman's jumper for Gawain Robards, a hazy-lacy shawl for Sibyll Trelawney, and a house robe for Severus (who had never yet been seen wearing knitwear more prominent than a school scarf in public and was unlikely to start now) would take all the time Albus had to spare. He might even have to take one of the projects off the for-Hogwarts list and do it on charmed needles like the gifts for the established faculty in the interests of time, though that would hardly do the same job.
The jumper, most likely. Gawain was only staying the year, after all, and Albus believed it extremely important for Severus to feel welcomed here. The lad's relationship with Hogwarts, and with Albus, needed a great deal of mending. Though his appointment wasn't necessarily intended to be permanent, as Sibyll's was, Albus badly wanted him to feel that he belonged.
Severus's mind had given dear Perenelle the impression of an implacable gargoyle, patiently poised for a protective strike. Albus wanted that for the children, always, and he was afraid that they might need it more than usually in the coming year. He was confident Severus would never think to withhold himself—for as long as he chose to stay.
It was a pity, because even a simply-patterned house robe would take more time than a jumper or even a complex shawl. But he needed Severus to feel connected with the castle more than he needed Gawain to, and Severus's school years had left him far warier of belonging here. Sibyll, who hadn't attended school here as a child, needed a mutual introduction to the castle far more than did either of the wizards. The two garments would take more work than the castle strictly needed at the moment, but they would feed her wards and whimsy and bolster her stones; the work wouldn't be wasted.
The time wouldn't be wasted either, but fitting it all in would be a challenge.
Nevertheless, after the call to Liverpool Albus had felt the combined stresses of the day had called for a self-indulgent evening. The spellwork hadn't been especially taxing, but both Barty Crouch and Cornelius Fudge had been extremely tense about the first major test of their new Muggle-Worthy Excuse division. As a result, Albus was going to have quite a lot of paperwork to process tomorrow for the Wizengamot, to say nothing of the report he felt called upon to circulate amongst his fellow Mugwumps whether they were interested or not.
There'd been no reason not to take the rest of the night for a nice, refreshing bubble bath and musical communion with a confection of a book. Trying to get some of the work in early wouldn't have done at all: he was re-learning very quickly that meetings containing Severus left him unusually tired.
It wasn't due to the constant objections—there were always a great many of these at the start of the year no matter who was on staff. Nor even the way Severus and Filius had taken about fifteen seconds after acknowledging each other as colleagues to be jointly reborn as the Terrible Tangent Twins. He'd already felt this way years ago, whenever Severus had been hauled into his office as a student to be taken to task. Even when the boy hadn't bothered to open his mouth or lift his eyes from the carpet, Albus had still felt exhausted afterwards.
This had alarmed him when Severus was quite young: it had reminded him of sweet, smiling, cold-eyed Tom Riddle. But he'd realized after a double handful of these encounters that the experiences were in direct opposition, and not just because of the open glaring and resentful clipped-off politeness with occasional shouting fits.
With Tom, one had the feeling of being braced against a hungry vacuum. He'd been like that from the moment Albus met him. Albus hadn't handled their meeting well, he'd realized afterwards, and had tried to think of him more kindly for a few years, until Slytherin had congealed into a slimy, sneering turtle around the boy.
It had just been such a shock. Gellert's presence had reached out for him, too, but that hunger had been personal, warm, and when he had been angry and cold there had been the hot hurt of rejection behind it. Although Albus had learned to disagree with him in principle as well as growing shocked by his methods, it could never be said of Gellert that he'd lusted for power over people merely for the sake of it. He and Albus had been quite old already, by Muggle standards, when a vision of mushroom clouds, melted flesh, and bones dissolving in the living had spurred him to frantic, desperate, utterly ruthless activism.
There was a reason that so many Europeans, from Belgium to the Ukraine, had loved him and been so angry at Albus for opposing him, and it wasn't only that they could see what outrages the muggles were committing on each other, wasn't only that wizards had got caught up in it and, due largely to a lack of muggle documentation but also in part to the usual wizardly disinterest in muggle fashions, identified as Romani. A staggering number of children and the less magically competent and the quite simply ambushed had been actually killed, and enormous swathes of wizarding Europe had reeled, but it wasn't only that. Gellert didn't care about many individuals—you had to make quite an impression on him before he even noticed you were as real as he—but he did care about his people and they knew it. He was harsh, he would pluck anyone he wanted to use out of their lives and throw them away without remorse, but he had never in his life been moved by the knee-jerk dictates of emptiness.
Severus was nothing like either of them in that way, at least, and had never been. Even his cold fits didn't grasp and suck like that; they had the chill of cold iron iced over, not of the black hole. He radiated.
Frustration, customarily.
While just as wearing as trying to instruct Tom had been, it felt quite different. Ending a meeting with Tom was like leaving a battle and realizing later that an important artery had been slightly nicked and a blood-replenishing potion was called for. Finishing one with Severus was more akin to leaving duelling practice: one was exhausted and sore, but the soreness was that of exercise, not harm.
Some exercise would not go amiss. Perhaps, as a treat to himself for dealing with the paperwork, Albus would invite Filius to some real duelling practice over the weekend. It might be as well to keep in practice, these days. Filius could always give him a challenge.
Stretching in anticipation of being stretched, Albus wiggled his toes again in his soft, fiery-red socks. Trilling along with the gramophone, Fawkes hit another wrong note.
If not impossible, that was so unlikely as to merit no consideration.
He looked up and realized it wasn't Fawkes at all. With a mental apology for distractedly assuming a phoenix even could hit a sour note, Albus got up and went to let in the little screech owl that was tapping at his window and hooting, off-key as a teakettle.
Poppy's handwriting wasn't frightened, but it was the bird she housed in her office and saved for urgent matters, and she asked him to come to the infirmary at once, not at his earliest convenience.
On arrival, he found, even in the private area behind a curtain, an absence of Poppy. "I thought you were crossing to the Continent tonight."
"I intended to," Severus agreed. "Or at least, first thing tomorrow. The last thing I need is certain people feeling obliged to be social in the hotel tavern and waking up with a hangover before we get anything done."
Albus might have enquired into the likelihood of a young potions master not having access to hangover preventions and cures; two things stopped him. To begin with, it was none of his affair.
More importantly, Poppy appeared to have tied Severus to one of the cot's bedsteads with a conjured rope around his thigh before going to bed. From the fall of his trousers, he appeared to be missing a patella, but he looked otherwise undamaged and not overly concerned.
That was concerning.
"Skele-gro," Severus said resignedly, watching his eyes twitch between the unnatural dip and the rope. It looked to be a quite soft rope, and not tied tightly, but Poppy knew her trade, knew her boys, and had not only made it red but turned the knot into a lion's head. One aiming a rather ironic and challenging expression at her patient. Before seeing it, Albus would have been quite surprised that she'd got someone as impatient as Severus to sit quietly and wait for him. "Not enough coral exoskeleton in it; I shall have to take calcium supplements for at least a week. The quality of the infirmary potions is pathetic, Professor; I hope Professor Slughorn doesn't think he can give brewing tasks to just anyone in detention and trust they'll do it right if he's not supervising."
"Severus, my boy," Albus said mildly, lacing his fingers together at his midsection, under his beard, "I appreciate your dedication to school welfare, but I must point out that you appear to be missing a knee."
"Thus the Skele-gro," Severus agreed, raising an eyebrow.
"Severus, what happened?"
"I brought an injury into an infirmary wallpapered with portraits who have other frames in other places, including the Ministry infirmary, and was promptly tied up and extensively scolded and had my walking stick taken away," Severus said by way of meaning that he didn't intend to talk here. Albus understood that by 'Ministry' he meant 'Auror division,' and nodded.
He glanced down at the rope and added, annoyed, "The point of the walking stick was that I wasn't putting weight on it. Or one could make a floating chair, for pity's sake."
"You're taking this remarkably well," remarked Albus, who felt that he, personally, wasn't. He'd seen others under his command be hurt far worse than this, of course, and seen some take worse just as bravely.
But there was something surreal about the combination of the quiet infirmary, the patient's air of barely-exasperated equilibrium, the bright cherry-coloured velvet rope against dark, grey-green whipcord, and the mellow evening Albus just enjoyed with his bodice ripper. It felt unreal—not only because he hadn't been braced, but because Severus, who'd been such a pushing presence in the staff meeting earlier (despite Horace's best efforts), wasn't radiating at all.
Severus raised chilly, accusing eyebrows at him. "It's hardly the first time I've taken this sort of a spell. At least this time I can tell myself there's a point to it." Then he pressed his mouth into a deliberate and unyielding line.
"I believe that the last time you were here in a sensitive situation, you were satisfied to put the portraits to sleep?" Albus inquired. The portraits all started complaining at him for raising the possibility, but Poppy would be rightly upset if he let the young man leave her domain while regrowing a bone.
"That was an emergency," Severus said. "Also, it wasn't my idea," he said loudly and indignantly to the portraits, "and I didn't even do it. I don't know portrait magic! I was just the distraction."
Dilys crossed her arms at him, rather more indignantly.
He shrugged at her with a believe-me-or-don't air and turned back to Albus. "In any case, as I said, that was an emergency. This is an easily treatable annoyance with associated security concerns."
With a sigh, Albus capitulated, "I suppose we shall simply have to leave Madam Pomfrey with a share of the annoyance, then, no doubt to be quickly returned to me," and bent to unenchant the rope.
"At least put the boy's splint back on him!" Dilys expostulated from her frame, throwing up her hands.
"I was going to put it back as soon as the rope came off," Severus explained to both her and Albus, summoning a strappy contraption from one of the cubbies Poppy kept for patients' belongings and attaching it to himself with an unhesitating competence Albus supposed his young man appreciated. "She charmed it to repel the thing."
"And that couldn't possibly because you ought not to be standing up," Dilys supposed sarcastically.
"Really?" Severus asked, eyes widening impertinently, if not quite mockingly. "Why couldn't it?"
"Put your weight on the other foot and lean on me," Albus instructed before that could go any further. "We'll go to my office." He bent so that Severus could get an arm around his shoulders, made sure the boy was balanced properly, and apparated them up to reappear right in front of his comfortable armchair so he could help Severus sit down at once. While he was in a position to do so, he examined the splint. "Did you transfigure this from grass, Severus?"
Severus nodded. "I left the cell structures in place and just changed the shape. I thought about summoning some bark from the Willow and doing a virtue-leeching charm to make it into a topical painkiller—"
"Would that work?" Albus asked, surprised. "It isn't an ordinary willow."
"No, it's commensurately stronger," Severus agreed. "Sometimes simples can be like that; the effect of the ingredient the flip side of the coin to the living thing. But it would have been a waste. My leg doesn't hurt, as such. Except when it gets twisted wrong. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to the actual bone growth starting, but for the moment…" He shrugged.
"Very well done, I must say," Albus murmured, turning the splint over in his hands before handing it over. "This would certainly be worth a few points, had you not graduated already. The uniform grey colour is unusual, if I may say so."
Severus shrugged uncomfortably as he put it on. "I never could get the hang of colour. When I transfigure something so the molecules are changed, it always goes grey unless it's something that's always one colour. Or at least, 'always' in the sense of the collective unconscious; when we did chestnuts into chicks in class, mine were as yellow as anyone else's. I think it's because I know how the physics of colour works in a broad sense, but I don't understand it well enough to visualize how it should work. I couldn't do any animals until I started thinking about how they're put together biologically, but no one I've asked does that."
"We shall have to work on that," Albus said, moving to the other chair. Before Severus could protest, he said firmly, "It's a tell, Severus. A calling card."
Severus closed his mouth, which twisted from scorn into (more appropriate) concern and then further twisted into intrigued plotting.
Albus did not, at this time, feel like inquiring, particularly as he thought he could probably guess. "What sort of tea would you like? Something with chamomile, perhaps, or a lapsang souchong?" Severus seemed like the smoked-tea sort; on the rare occasion he accepted a sweet from Albus, it was usually a liquorice snap.
"Too strong for the hour, but I could fancy a cup of Yunnan if we have it," Severus said, looking as though he thought he was pushing his luck.
Albus snapped for an elf and smiled at the one who showed up. "Good evening, Jinky," he nodded. "An evening tea tray, if you please, with Yunnan for Instructor Snape and a peppermint-basil blend for me."
Jinky beamed, bowed, and left, coming back with two pots on a tray with a plate of buttery crumpets and a little cut-glass pot of pumpkin jam. He snapped his fingers, and Albus's usual tea table appeared between the two armchairs.
"The swiss cheese is bread?" Severus asked dubiously, sniffing.
"Jinky is making the crumpets wrong?" Jinky asked Albus, devastated.
" That's a crumpet?!" Severus asked, staring. "I thought they were like flat scones."
"Severus, my dear boy," Albus asked, hiding his smile behind the teapot as he poured, "are you quite sure you're British?" He tried to remember if he'd ever seen Severus at breakfast on weekends, but that wasn't the sort of detail about students that stayed with him.[4]
"How thick do you slice the potatoes for a hot pot," Severus fired back, scowling. "Go on, West Country, I'm timing you. One-raging-hippogriff, two-raging-hippogriffs..."
"Two and a half millimetres, sir!" Jinky answered hastily, looking very worried. "Jinky's name is Jinky, sir! Not Weskentry, sir!"
Severus stopped glaring at Albus, who was putting what Severus obviously considered to be excessive quantities of lemon and sugar into his tea, and turned to look down at the elf. He didn't quite appear to have forgotten that Jinky was there, but he did look a bit taken by surprise. His head tilted, and then one corner of his mouth turned up and he graciously allowed, "All right, you may live."
Jinky beamed. "Is masters wanting a hot pot?"
"Not at the moment," Severus said. "It'd make a nice change from cottage pie in winter, though. Less mushy."
"A fine idea," Albus nodded. He wasn't sure whether it would scale up to a castle full of mouths as well as the other, as he understood it was intended to be made in a family-sized dish, but surely there was little harm in trying once. "I believe we have all we'll need for the moment, Jinky."
When the elf had bowed and popped out, Severus said wearily, "Whoever gives elves names a six-year-old wouldn't give their pet hamster should be shot. Jinky. Good grief."
"I believe your friend Regulus Black's grandfather Arcturus is the foremost elf breeder and trainer in the country," Albus pointed out.
"And every elf I've met that he's trained is a complete nutjob," Severus declined the opportunity to reconsider criticising his good friend's extremely wealthy and powerful Head of House. "The sanest of them wears evening gowns made of tea towels for house robes and makes hats out of actual bowls and stove-pipes. He is not confused: his humans dress irreproachably. It is a choice. Because he is a nutter."
"I must say," Albus protested, his interest engaged although he really didn't wish to be drawn too far off-topic, "that he sounds a most clever and whimsical elf."
"You wouldn't say whimsical once you've met him, but I'll admit I've seen other elves look at him the way muggles look at rock stars. He's still a nutter." He took a cautious bite of crumpet, said dully, "Everyone is trying to give me a heart attack with butter today," and put his head down on the table.
"Do have some tea," Albus advised kindly, trying not to smile, "and tell me what happened. You needn't worry about the portraits here; they'll never speak of what happens in this office except to the Headmasters after me. And only then if they know what to ask."
Severus sighed and dragged himself back up to a more classical sitting position. "I went home after the staff meeting and did some marking while I was waiting for Evan to come home," he said. "I expect you know why he was late?"
"I might, depending upon how late," Albus said. "Auror Moody mentioned he was in Liverpool, along with Mrs. Potter and her parents."
"I would be deeply obliged if you would refer to Lily by her name in my presence," Severus said, twitching. "And, if remotely possible, refer to her husband not at all."
"Well, I see no reason to refer to either of them any more tonight," he allowed, caught between a smile and a sigh.
"...Then that will do for the moment, I suppose." Severus eyed him, belligerently refusing to say anything that could be taken as agreeing to be plagued later just to be spared now. He was starting to press on Albus's awareness again in his usual way. It was, oddly, a relief. "Well. There was a summons; I followed it. And now we arrive at the much-anticipated question of how much should I tell you, of what I'm not already magically prevented from telling you? You know I can't give names, but there's also the question of…" he paused. "Are you going to know what I mean, if I say 'Coventry'?"
"Yes, indeed," Albus said gravely, bowing his head. "You tell me everything you can, Severus. It's a hideous choice, and someday you may have to make it, though I pray none of us will. I pray you will never have enough experience in war to be the right one to make it. Unless and until you are, it is not your responsibility."
Severus shot him an Okay, but I'm the one on the spot and I don't know how far to trust you look.
Albus expected that. His agents had to be able and willing to make field decisions in an emergency. He just needed them to wait for those emergencies, rather than assuming every hard choice was their job. He hadn't been sure Severus would be one of the bold who'd have to be reined back.
His approach had never been to train soldiers, but rather to orient the brilliantly unconventional in the necessary directions and empower them to wreak their own sorts of havoc in their own ways. Severus certainly fit the criteria, but he'd also been a Slytherin under careful, politic Horace. When he'd played Quidditch, his captains had never behaved as though he'd endangered the team's prospects by flouting a set strategy. Albus had thought he might need a bit more of a shove to make his own decisions in the moment.
Apparently Severus was instead only going to be the usual sort of difficult-to-manage, which was all to the good. If true. It was early days yet, in the dual senses that Severus was new to the work and that Albus didn't have a good sense yet of what his opponent had in mind.
Still, that look told him that Severus needed to hear what he always told his Gryffindors, and so he said it. "One hasn't always the luxury of reporting back, but there is always reason to when one can. The benefit of everyone reporting to a single point is that he, or, in this case, I, will thus compile a bird's eye view of the problem, based on reports from those many angles, and will be able to bring to decisions information it may not be safe for everyone to know."
"A panopticon is a prison, you know," Severus said in a you have a point but so do I voice. Albus did not mistake it for unconditional agreement when he went on, "Very well. I was summoned. I can tell you things about the place if you like, but he hasn't repeated places yet."
"I'll have you write a thorough report and give it to Filius. On Monday, I suppose."
"Oh, good," Severus said sourly. "Their homework and mine own."
"I trust yours will employ better spelling," Albus said cheerfully. "Can you tell me how many were present?" It was a pity that Tom wasn't foolish enough to allow his followers the ability to identify their fellows to others, but one simply had to work around these matters.
"Well, yes, as long as you understand that's not an indicator of how many exist. Twelve present, Not Counting."
"How did he choose who attended? Was there a message for each attendee?"
Severus shrugged. "He has us split up into cells for added security, I believe; I usually see the same people at meetings. Not individual messages. I suspect there will be other meetings held elsewhere and with others, for the same purpose. For all I know, the number was chosen for numerological reasons."
Although Severus had spoken flippantly, Albus considered that quite likely. Prosper Quilibiri, who had taught arithmancy at the time, had called Tom capable, dedicated, and enthusiastic. While the first terms had been commonly applied to the boy that Albus was more inclined to call unsettling, most other teachers had been more apt to describe his demeanour with terms like 'charming,' 'polite,' and 'a pleasure to have in class.'
Which, in Albus's experience, meant that the student so described was respectful, attentive, and, though generally prepared to be called upon and unlikely to be caught reading magazines under the table or passing notes, seldom raised their hand.
"Or," Severus continued, "so that the size of the circle was optimized for acoustics, or just small enough to let him see everyone's eyes."
"And what was the purpose?"
"I infer," Severus said wearily, "that there are about to be more publicized disturbances. He didn't say so, exactly, but there was some talk about promoting sympathetic voices and there's to be a… a costume. Uniform. It won't go home with people. We didn't see it. The stated agenda was the taking of measurements."
"That is unfortunate," Albus frowned.
"I suppose you don't mean the introduction of what is undoubtedly going to be something that would make anyone look completely stupid in daylight but rather that he's not careless enough to give people things to keep in their houses to be found if raided."
Albus's mouth and beard twitched. "The latter, yes, Severus, and also the likelihood of more 'publicized disturbances.'"
"That was expected, though, wasn't it? He wants his message to be seen as the solution to a pressing problem, but all the problems the Prophet even acknowledges as problems are endemic, not acute. We knew he was going to have to create more visibly-pressing problems himself."
"And no details," Albus pressed.
"As I said, he didn't even say there were going to be any. That's merely my supposition."
Albus gestured to Severus's missing knee. "Why did he do this?"
The boy's mouth pressed flat again. "Wrong question."
Albus sat back in his chair and sipped his tea. Despite the queasy appearance of the sunken joint, he couldn't help but be amused. "In your own words then, my boy."
"'Why this' is the wrong question," Severus elaborated. "He did this in particular because he wanted to force somebody to their knees or lower in front of everybody. He did it to me because his first example was a shocking one to pureblood sensibilities, chosen to be as much of a shock as he could get away with. A second one like that would likely have incited outright rebellion, but in those circles I am at best a second-class citizen. They weren't going to object to my being made an example of, and that lack of objection solidifies the precedent for letting him do as he likes even when the pretext is thin."
"Horace would be proud of your reasoning, my boy," Albus said, frowning, troubled.
Severus shrugged, conveying both that he didn't mean to be drawn off-topic and that he considered Horace's good opinion a low bar to meet. "Since he wasn't actually angry with me he decided to save the screaming and writhing to create more of an impact when someone had failed him in a way that was more obviously a result of a poor attitude or stupid mistake. He wants to scare everyone a bit, not terrify them off."
Albus sat back and took a sip of tea while he processed his consternation. "Why do you say he wants to scare 'everyone'? I take it you mean his own people?."
Severus paused. "...Right, we hadn't had a chance to talk privately since the last time I saw him, had we. Er. If you were about to start thinking about an approximately-regular excuse to meet securely, please don't say so out loud; I'm going to need to be able to say I cleverly gulled you into it, as I'll explain in a minute."
"I'm sure such an arrangement hadn't crossed my mind and I had no plans to make one with you on your return from the continent now that you've had a chance to grow accustomed to the rhythm of the school again," Albus said placidly.
"One week is in no way long enough to grow accustomed to this madhouse!" Severus retorted, appalled, instead of being sorry for doubting him.
Albus chuckled and checked to see if Severus's cup needed refilling before he topped off his own. "What happened at the last meeting, then?"
"Someone had been muggle-baiting, but it seems their target turned out to be a squib instead, or nearly one, and that they were hit with a With My Last Breath curse," Severus said flatly. "Extremely unpleasant all around, by the sound of it, even before he decided to make an example of them."
"As a discouragement against muggle-baiting?" Albus asked, not optimistic but groping for a silver lining.
"Of course not," Severus dismissed this irritably. "He didn't say what it was a discouragement for, specifically. That would have helped people avoid punishment in future. He just made a remark about ineptitude and went on to telling everyone he expects better from everybody."
"And, in your opinion, he meant…"
"...That he wants to create a culture where people expect to be publicly hurt and humiliated with no solid explanation of what they did wrong and no guidance for how to avoid it so everyone is fighting with each other to be on his good side and willing to throw each other under the train, but not to expect that everyone will be on his bad side all at once so that the possible benefits of alliance will never be outweighed by the promise of 'it probably won't be me this time and if it is nobody will stand up for me because if it's me they're safe for the night and whatever happens it'll probably be survivable?"
"What do you suppose," Albus rephrased patiently, instead of advising him to breathe occasionally, "he meant by 'ineptitude'?"
Severus shrugged. "If he meant anything at all, I suppose it was either 'be better at ducking' or 'be better at telling squibs apart from muggles."
"We must know whether it was the latter: we must know who is likely to be targeted," Albus pressed, leaning forward with his teacup warming his fingers. "The muggle authorities have noted disappearances that fall under their purview. We have lost witches and wizards who, while not muggle themselves, have family connections to the unmagical world. Does he extend Squibs protected status, as wizarding citizens innocent of choices he dislikes, or not? Is his claim to value magic, or the old families, or those who have completely committed to our society?"
"He doesn't make a lot of claims, as such," Severus said dubiously. "As I understand it, he took over an existing organization which was primarily bent on the good fortunes of its members, who all belonged to old families, and the rhetoric used to expand it has been, er, flexible and vague. Your old friend certainly thinks it's been flexible."
"There will be a line drawn," Albus predicted, with certainty. "Even when the people are frightened, they won't turn to an enigma."
"Why not?" Severus asked, raising his eyebrows. "What does the voting public ever know about those it promotes? Only that they're uniformly unreliable and any promise is either false when made or naively impracticable. People are entirely used to choosing leaders to put their trust in based entirely on known networks and an unsubstantiated gut-feeling."
Albus swallowed a remark about cynicism. Severus would insist upon taking it as a compliment. "Someone who wants followers and is not afraid to have enemies," he explained, "will draw a line as an indication of whose welfare he will be sympathetic to. In—"
"I don't see why fear has to come into it," Severus said. Albus didn't think he'd intended to interrupt, and resolved to leave less space between his remarks in future, even when he wanted to give Severus time to think about the last one. "If you want more followers and have no morals, it's only sense to draw as blurry a line as possible, so as few people as possible will be sure you're not for them."
"But a blurry line isn't powerful, Severus," Albus said gently. "When I was young, a majority of muggles lived wretched lives, packed away where the powerful didn't have to notice their struggles. The sort of poverty that was more common than success… well. Dickins resonated for a reason. A wizard without money can live very comfortably, provided he can find a corner of land no one is using and acquire some seeds—"
"I'm not meant to pretend this isn't a gross oversimplification, am I?" Severus asked dubiously. "You're assuming competence at both charms and transfiguration at the very least, and never getting sick."
"Muggle education," Albus said, "is oriented towards teaching children the skills they may need to work and handle their finances. That has only very recently become broadly available. Wizarding education has been available to everyone on this island with enough magic to water a begonia for the last thousand years. It was devised by a culture of apprenticeship, not one built on a foundation of factories. Therefore its first goal is to teach children the skills they need to live."
Severus raised a sceptical eyebrow at him.
"Transfiguration provides and builds when there's nothing available that can serve as is," Albus explained, with a brief lick of nostalgia for his teaching days. "Magic can't make something from nothing, but with mastery, a spoiled potato becomes a wholesome feast. A stick is a comfortable shelter, a leaf is a set of fine clothes. A wizard proficient in charms need never waste time on the daily grind of domesticity. A wizard who learns even the basics of potions can use those skills to prepare a meal. A capable magical herbologist can sow a stretch of sand with a handful of seeds and have a garden heavy with fruit before sunrise. A diviner knows, if not always what to prepare for, when to be prepared."
"You only know what to prepare for if your study of history doesn't consist of a series of naps," Severus pointed out, with the militant air of one pulling out an axe to begin grinding it.
"With a sound grounding in our core classes, a wizard can improve his quality of life through a paying profession, but he can also improve it with no profession, through practice and imagination or further study. There will always be a few children who will not or cannot learn—"
Severus, judging from the tenacious glint in his eye, wanted to continue complaining about Binns. And possibly other teachers.
Albus refused to be sidetracked into an unproductive discussion. "—And must either fail or rely on others or on money, but they comprise less than a drop in the bucket in comparison to the sheer numbers of muggles in cities who have no resources to draw upon at all. They festered in illness when I was young, Severus, and they starved in rags, and did what they could to survive even if it hurt or took from others, and hospitals were, at best, where one went to die."
"This is leading up to something so paternalistic it's going to make me want to hex you," Severus remarked with heavy-eyed fatalism.
"I shouldn't be at all surprised," Albus agreed cheerfully. "When I was young, as now, the two prevailing schools of thought in Wizarding Britain were best summarized as…" He looked at Severus expectantly.
"Secrecy and domination," Severus sighed, making a face.
"Just so, although the term 'oversight' was preferred."
"How… genteel."
"At that time," Albus explained to the curled lip, "the latter camp had cohered around quite different feelings than those driving it now. The rhetoric was beneficent. I have no doubt that many, in their hearts, secretly sought only power, but what we—yes, I include my foolish young self—spoke of and concerned ourselves with wasn't advantage-seeking or self-defence, but compassion for the great hordes of muggles, who, if I may quote Thomas Hobbes—"
"You may consider it understood," Severus said hastily, with the desperation of someone who'd had poor, nasty, brutish, and short already quoted to him several times too many and had perhaps, as a man of limited funds and average height, taken it personally.
Albus opened his hand in acquiescence. "They had no real access, or even a chance at access, to what was needed to take care of themselves—that is, to live with dignity, in reasonable safety or comfort," he added as Severus's eyes caught fire with infuriated pride, and the boy looked likely to forget his knee, rise up, and start shouting, "without magic, and their leaders were doing nothing of consequence for them, and we had the power to do more."
"To give a man a fish," Severus snapped, fingers drumming the arm of his chair fitfully as hummingbird wings.
He opened his hand again. "This was the debate when I was a young man: should we take responsibility for those who shared our shores and were suffering, or refrain from interference with those who, in effect, lived in a completely different nation, knew nothing of us, and might well turn to killing or exploiting us again if we revealed ourselves?"
"'Take responsibility,'" Severus repeated flatly. "How I do love being right."
Albus smiled and refilled their cups. "It may cheer you to know that the debate remained largely theoretical for some decades, even though at the time we all judged each other through the lenses of scandal and good works. Attempts to move it beyond parlour-room discussion never got beyond cases of individual outreach, though some of those were notable."
"It sounds to me as though your movement failed because it invited people to engage in highly expensive charity at the risk of completely dismantling your society and with no promise that they'd benefit from it themselves, not because a line wasn't drawn," Severus pointed out.
"I'm getting to what changed," Albus assured him.
Severus threw up his hands, the two innermost fingers folded down by his thumbs, his head tilted at a sharp angle, and cheered, "Vive la Révolution Industrielle!" The sharp movement nearly threw him off out of his chair, as he was unused to balancing himself with only one leg. He recovered well and pretended that nothing untoward had happened with the clumsy gravitas of the very young.
"Yes, indeed," Albus chuckled, indulging his sense of dignity. "Poverty persisted—"
"Persists."
"—But medicine advanced, and the muggle government began to make some real effort towards making the lives of the poor—well, let us say 'less intolerable.'"
"As the product of a factory town, I would agree that may be your least preposterous choice," Severus drawled.
"And so the argument that we could not in conscience fail to interfere lost power and fell silent. And then muggles developed airpower and began to drop bombs. Have you ever tried to cast an offensive spell against something even half a mile away, Severus?"
"I have not," admitted Severus, looking intrigued. "I don't think I've seen any spell that moves in a set direction through physical space go farther than the length of a Quidditch pitch. I don't see why it should be impossible, though. Transportation spells aren't limited in distance except by the power that can be put into them and the national wards they have to cross, and a firm accio can summon something from…" he paused. "I'm sure I've summoned and banished things from at least a quarter-mile away. Textbooks from across the lake, that sort of thing."
"Not everyone can," Albus reminded him—or told him, possibly, as he seemed both surprised to hear and disinclined to believe it. "And it's a quite different sort of magic. The sort of magic used in a duel reaches its target through space. Accio is a transportation spell, really, and like other transportation spells, the target is reached through will and—"
"Yes, transportation magic is far closer to dark magic than most jinxes. I know," Severus said impatiently. "Intended-effect rather than defined-effect. Forms connections and works more through imagination and decision than line-of-sight and ritual."
"Aim is also a consideration, at a great distance. I don't say a wizard can't fell an aeroplane or zeppelin, but to do so from the ground would be beyond most, while apparition onto a moving target is…"
"Ill-advised?" Severus offered.
"After I first saw it attempted, several years passed before I was prepared to eat jam again."
Anyone would have winced, but Severus flinched. He had, as Albus had noted before, imagination.
Those who could imagine and anticipate pain were the easiest to interrogate, and Severus was also observant and inclined to piece information together. Albus could never allow him to take any serious risk of exposure without both an easy and instant exit strategy and a way to neutralize his knowledge. He made a mental note to talk to Filius about it when they went out to have that sparring match.
"It can be done," he went on once Severus had finished turning green and looked prepared to pay attention to anything outside his own head. "However, it requires not only great power and precision but also a difficult variant on a cushioning charm and a sound understanding of physics coupled with accurate measurement of the object's speed and course. I would advise no one to try it who had not first spent at least a year in training after developing proficiency with ordinary apparition."
He paused. "Severus. No."
Severus eyed him not so much mutinously as with plots behind his eyes.
"I don't mean a year of putting in a few hours here and there, Severus, or even an hour or so daily. I mean a year of undistracted apprenticeship."
Severus looked sulky. But, thank Merlin, not rebelliously so.
"I tell you this to explain that once their guns became accurate at a certain distance, once they began dropping bombs from above, no ordinary wizard could defeat them. Few could effectively defend themselves. It took great skill to protect one's family, one's house, without breaking the Statute of Secrecy when the bombs began to fall. When Grindelwald meant to convince, when he succeeded, he didn't speak of philosophy. He said: ' That is the threat, this is what we must protect.'"
"Was he really that clear about the 'this,' though?" Severus asked dubiously. "Or was it a 'that is the threat and WE must protect ourselves,' with some room for leeway on what 'we' meant?"
"There was some room," Albus allowed. "But the line was drawn clearly, if not sharply, between magical society—those who live in the world of magic, care for that world, think in magical terms—and those who lead cold iron lives."
Severus drank tea, slowly. "All right," he said finally, "I understand you, but even if he meant 'you were inept for attacking a squib instead of a muggle,' I don't think you can rely on it to mean he'll be drawing his public line between magical and unmagical bloodlines."
"Why not?" Albus asked, smiling at him encouragingly.
Indicating his misshapen leg, Severus said, "Because at that moment he was directing his message at people who he expects to be very proud of their magical bloodlines and guard them jealously. Myself excepted, but he doesn't expect me to be ideologically motivated. These particular people would be happy to marry… well, to marry their ugliest and most imbecilic spare children to a squib from a good family with wealth. They would at best have the same reaction that my mother met with to a treasured heir marrying any muggle. It doesn't mean that would be the message he'd take public."
Albus nodded, and said, "I don't ask you to confidently tell me the answer now, my boy, only to pay close attention to the message as it develops."
"Ah." Severus looked happier. "Certainly."
"What does he expect to motivate you?" he asked.
Severus's cold smile was rather reptilian. "Resentment."
"How like Tom not to recognize love when it treads on his foot," Albus remarked, and kindly pretended to be blind and deaf for the duration of the instant adolescent flush and prolonged choking fit. "And so we dispense with the 'why this,'" he concluded, nodding at the missing knee. "On which subject, has the potion begun to work yet?"
Severus pursed his lips. "Yes, but not in the sense that the new bone has begun to grow. The first few hours after the potion is drunk work…" he paused. "Will you know what I mean if I start discussing RNA and gene regulation?"
"Perhaps vaguely." He highly doubted that Horace would, even vaguely, and yet he was sure Horace would have been able to explain what happened in those first few hours in a way that Albus could understand.
"Er." Severus pressed his lips thin, considering. "The skele-gro is currently at work convincing the cells to behave, just for a while, like a lizard who's lost its tail, but without sacrificing the ultimately human nature of the regenerated tissues?" Albus nodded his understanding, and Severus relaxed. "In any case, the time before the bone regrows isn't a delay, it's an invisible first step that takes a few hours."
"Very clearly put," Albus commended him. "Though I encourage you to make an effort to use shorter words when giving explanation to even the older children."
Severus looked outraged, but didn't reply.
"I assure you," Albus told him earnestly. "You may be tempted to believe that the NEWT students, at least, should be able to understand you and that precision in your language can only help. But I do assure you that your message will come across more clearly in a more limited vocabulary. In this case, you could have stopped at the lizard's tail and I would have understood you perfectly."
"Whether you're right about that or not," Severus folded his arms furiously, "how many hats am I expected to wear at any particular moment? I was talking to you."
"It merely seemed an opportune moment to mention it," Albus assured him, summoning a lemon drop from his desk. Lemon juice and sugar in the tea were all well and good, but they didn't have quite the same flavour.
"It wasn't!"
"We live and learn," he said philosophically, popping the sweet into his mouth and banishing the wrapper. "And, in aid of learning, let us move to the question of 'why did he choose you to make an example of.' Would you like one?" he appended, recalling that it was impolite to neglect his hosting duties just because he knew his guest would decline.
"No. " Severus drained his cup in several slow sips, very obviously counting to ten in his head. Putting the cup down, he exhaled hard and visibly refocused. "You mean his stated reason? I've told you what I believe to be the real one."
"I do."
Severus nodded. "The stated reason, then was that I've been at Hogwarts a whole week and haven't made any particular progress in becoming close to you, and had to report that it's currently impossible for me to brew for him here."
"Is it?" Albus asked, raising his eyebrows. "As we have discussed before, Severus, I do intend that you should, so as to discourage him from relying on a brewer whose time would be unlimited and who we could not restrain."
"Well, yes, or nearly enough to impossible as to make no difference right now," Severus insisted. " You know what I'm doing, but Professor Slughorn doesn't. The brewing areas are all monitored by the portraits and the elves, and even a teacher as, er, relaxed as he is wouldn't fail to put wards and warnings on the more sensitive equipment and the ingredient stores. Getting past all those protections without him finding out would take time, and, I repeat, your suggestion that a week is enough time to grow accustomed to the rhythms of the school is ludicrous if you mean working out how to even get all the marking done on time while completely neglecting my thesis."
"You will grow more efficient," Albus assured him. "I might suggest speaking to the professors about their methods. Mine would be of no use to you, as it involved a great deal of practical homework and only so many written assignments as were absolutely required to ensure they understood the theories."
"That is of absolutely no use," Severus agreed, though for once he didn't sound critical. "Not for Potions. Even if I were the one deciding on the homework, three students this week bungled extremely simple potions in ways that would have been disasters if they'd been unsupervised."
Albus smiled philosophically and made no mention of Severus's already-infamous reaction to the first such disaster. Aside from Filius's intervention, it was universally understood that giving up one's time to oversee detentions was the appropriate self-punishment for failing to control one's class, so no more need be said. And, in any case, Hagrid seemed to be enjoying himself, and Filius reported that young Mr. Quirrell had gone into something of a research frenzy. "What did you tell him that you'll do?"
"I convinced him—which wasn't difficult as he already believes it; as I said, he was looking for a scapegoat—that my highest priority here has to be to convince the school at large, including Professor Slughorn, that my presence is legitimate and I am to be relied on, and that doing so will, as I said, certainly take considerably longer than a week, especially considering that half the staff is suspicious of me based on my House and the astonishing volume of amusing little Gryffindor peccadillos for which I was successfully framed as a student."
Albus just barely managed not to sigh.
"I said the first step is to be seen as an innocuous presence—or at least to have my presence taken for granted. Which I told him I estimate will take several weeks, though to be quite honest I don't expect it to happen until the next term starts and I'm still here, assuming that to be the case. But I said that once that perception is in place and I have more experience in managing the workload, I should be able to excuse brewing anything with an innocuous application, whether it's extracted from a larger batch for Madam Pomfrey or it comes to me as a private commission."
Albus raised an eyebrow. He did not expect his castle to be used as a place of business.
Severus shot him a look that was just shy of pitying. "Slughorn will expect me to be taking private commissions. If you think he doesn't take some himself and assign most of them as extra credit to help the dedicated prepare for OWLs and NEWTs, you're mad. If he doesn't see me at it, he'll think I'm taking orders for potions of which he'd be obliged to disapprove. Once he's reassured that the sort of commissions I'm taking while under his supervision won't damage his reputation, I can work on convincing him to change the wards to the labs so the portraits don't come shrieking to him every time I want to use the glassware after hours."
"And it worked? He will allow you the time?"
Severus shrugged, only a little bitterly. "We'd come to that understanding at least a month ago, really, even if the details weren't laid out. I'm not sure if he forgot or if I was simply on his schedule and it was an excuse that would pass muster with the audience. Either way, he'd already agreed to it."
Regarding him, Albus put his cup down. "Severus," he said slowly, "I wish to be very clear with you. Although you call it a mere annoyance, tonight makes it clear that you are in as precarious a position as you would have been in the court of a Caligula, if we believe the worst that was said of him. You must believe that I'm not doubting your courage in saying this."
Severus raised extremely sceptical eyebrows at him. "And 'this' is?"
"That I intended to ask you to take a very dangerous role, one which risks far worse than you have faced tonight—but not one where the risks you run will be unforeseeable and entirely beyond both your control and my own."
"I did say 'I can't' to him," Severus said half-heartedly.
"You said 'I can't yet' to something you had every reason to think he didn't expect of you," Albus said firmly. "You have hinted that you expect everyone to take a turn at being an 'example.' Do you think he will be satisfied with treating everyone unreasonably only once? It didn't sound as if you do."
Shaking his head, Severus agreed, "I don't."
"Then we are no longer dealing with a risk of pain, humiliation, and damage, but with an inevitability. The role of ill-fortune is now confined to the chances of bad timing, of irreparable damage, and of reactions which will weaken your position, in addition to the risk of mental invasion."
Severus just met his eyes steadily. Unhappily, but steadily.
You are not quite twenty-two.
If that had ever meant anything to a boy of that age beyond an insult, Albus would have said it. If he'd thought for a moment that Severus would understand it to mean You don't know what it will be to spend decades impaired or in pain, instead of You're a child, he would have said it.
"I am ordering you," he said, "as your Supreme Mugwump, to whom you have pledged your obedience in the matter of your ICW consultancy, to begin, immediately , to consider possible exit strategies."
After a moment, Severus said dryly, "Wise of you to preface that by denying you're questioning my resolve."
"Strategies to hold in reserve, my boy," he explained. "We would have had this discussion at some point, one way or another, but I'm now convinced we must not delay. In our previous discussions, you've left me with the impression that you see no way to remove yourself from his clutches?"
"None," Severus agreed grimly. "He'd find me if he looked. Best case scenario: siege. Simple flight, even to somewhere protected, would be completely useless in a long-term sense. Taking into consideration this new turn towards making examples, we can say with confidence that he'd look. Hard."
"Then finding a way out may take some time. You aren't to wait until you know you need one to start looking." He leaned across the tea tray and laid a hand on Severus's arm, above the wrist. "This is what we must ask of each other, and accept from each other, when threats loom. To risk our futures. Sometimes even to sacrifice our futures, with no hope of escape. But never without reason. I will risk your potential, Severus; I won't waste it. Start planning."
For a long moment, Severus looked at him. The dark gaze was so piercing, so hesitant and guarded that Albus half expected to feel a probe into his mind. He held himself open for it, but it didn't come. Severus just searched his face.
And, finally, without expression, nodded twice, once slow and once sharp, and blandly answered, "Veddy good, sir."
Albus laughed and, standing, held out his arm to help Severus up. "Home, Jeeves," he jested lightly, thinking how nice it was to be able to trust one's companion to understand that sort of joke.
Once Severus was standing steady Albus apparated them to his agent's door. This won him a look (very likely his second of the evening, but his attention had, earlier, been elsewhere) in which he could read the dual accusations of showing off and not trusting Severus to have read the castle's history, but it would have been a quite unnecessary farce to walk down five flights of stairs and across a building with three knees between them, to say nothing of the waste of time Going in, he handed Severus off to the visibly worried and less-visibly enraged Rosier waiting with hair-chewing impatience on the wrong side of the wardrobe.
Rosier said, politely, "Good evening, Professor." He said nothing about Albus keeping Severus talking instead of telling him to come home at once when he was not entirely whole.
Albus smiled benevolently and said, "Do enjoy your trip, boys." He said nothing about faculty spouses being meant to stay out of the castle except in emergencies.
"For pity's sake," Severus said, hanging considerably less awkwardly off his young man's stooped shoulder than he had off Albus's arm, just as he ought. Beneath his display of annoyance, he looked inappropriately happy for someone who was missing a bone, expected to have his sleep plagued by stabbing, prickling pain, and intended to get up early to fence with a monomaniac. "Both of you stop it at once."
1. In retrospect, he would have done better to keep the House another year and give Minerva more of an adjustment period. It would have been a great deal to take on at once even without taking that year's newest students into account, though at least he had hired an assistant to help him with the administrative work until she was ready to fully step in as his deputy.
He'd never thought the Headship would be such a strain for her; it had always been the brightest and easiest part of his job. He had not expected or accounted for children who would fight like genuine and desperate enemies, and Minerva hadn't deserved it or been confident enough to ask for help. He would have to speak to her about being quite so resentful of Severus for getting the adjustment period she could have used. It was hardly the lad's fault that Albus hadn't known better then, and only partly his fault that she had needed one.
2. Basil Fronsac had done all his repairs through bookbinding. Everard claimed that any repetitively-mundane work-of-the-hands could do the job if you got your mind right, and said he'd done his by polishing the statues in the halls and sharpening their blades. Albus believed he was just embarrassed about being forced to do witchery.
3. Not quite twenty years later, when Albus explained all this to him, Severus suggested that making the job unbearable for people who couldn't Hufflepuff might have been her intention. Albus gave him the Can't You Take The Emerald City Glasses Off For Two Minutes; I'm A Bit Disappointed In Your Scaliness Right Now look, but Severus was right pissed off at him at the time, in a slow-simmering sort of way, and didn't consider Albus's deliberately-uninformed disappointment to be his problem. Besides, after that incredibly blind Sort Too Soon comment he felt a duty to point out that no one was confined to one House's most obvious stereotypes, given that it had come from the most Slytherin Gryffindor he'd ever met.
Anyway, he strongly suspected he was right about Helga. He'd seen tapestries and illuminations (though nothing Evan would call a proper portrait), and she looked like someone you could talk to, not like someone stupid or naive or incapable of turning her fingers into three-inch badger-claws and ripping someone's guts out.
4. In fact the student Severus, as a rule, had only attended breakfasts on school days, when the available grain dishes were limited to toast, muesli, and porridge. He had eaten breakfast on weekends, but had usually preferred to save himself something from the day before or slip down to the kitchens than partake of the elves' more exuberant morning spreads. The Gryffindors generally did get up in time for breakfast, and Severus had seen no reason to start a day with no class off on the wrong foot. On the rare occasions he had gone, he had determinedly kept his nose in a book, ignoring both everybody he could get away with ignoring and all the heavy food that didn't go crunch.
Notes on crumpets: I am here to tell you it is entirely possible to have zero exposure to one of your nation's signature foods. If I have ever seen a grit in my life, I probably thought I was looking at mashed potatoes. Granted, England is geographically smaller, but I'm standing by my premise that crumpets were too fancy for Severus's town in the 70s, although it seems to have made an economic recovery since then.
