Title: Runes, Stones, and Kingfishers
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Severus
Content Notes: AU in that Severus lives, Headmaster Severus Snape, mild angst, humor
Wordcount: This part 3000
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This might have been a good week for Severus if an incompetent Ravenclaw student hadn't managed to Transfigure himself into a kingfisher and get stuck that way, secret rooms weren't suddenly being revealed all over Hogwarts, and the stones weren't trying to eat snogging students, and if the Ministry didn't think the right way to solve these problems was to send Auror Harry Potter to fix it.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "From Litha to Lammas" fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year. It was written for goddess47's request for Harry/Severus and Severus having a bad day as Headmaster, and will have two parts.

Runes, Stones, and Kingfishers

"There it is." Severus spoke quietly, holding up a hand when Minerva would have started forwards. "Weren't you the one who told me that we didn't want to startle it?"

"He, Severus," Minerva muttered to him. Her back was up as if she was contemplating turning into a cat to pounce on their problem child. Her eyes were certainly fixed on it. "He's still a human boy."

"And he's going to wish he wasn't when I catch him," Severus muttered, and carefully drew his wand.

The idiot in question was currently sitting on the banister of the Grand Staircase, head cocking back and forth as the light reflected off his brilliant blue feathers. How the boy had managed to Transfigure himself into a kingfisher, when his class had supposedly been tasked with turning small boxes into them, Severus would never know. And he had been in the bird's body for long enough by now that he had no trace of a human mind left.

If there had been a human mind there in the first place, which Severus was beginning to doubt.

"We ought to get an owl in here," Severus added under his breath. "Weren't you the one who told me they're the primary predators of kingfishers?"

"Raptors in general, Severus, not owls." Minerva didn't have to sound so patient about everything. Then again, it was better than her sounding smug because she'd managed to escape the Headmaster's job while sticking him with it. "And we can't trust one of them not to hurt the boy, unfortunately. He looks too much like a real bird not to fire their prey instincts."

"Would a bit of pain keep him from doing this again?"

Minerva sent him a chiding look, and then changed abruptly into a cat and sprang at their idiot student with her paws out. Severus started, and the kingfisher took flight with a loud, surprised beat of its wings.

Minerva missed, and crashed to the steps of the Grand Staircase, spitting in fury. Meanwhile, the kingfisher turned and soared down the corridor that led towards the Hufflepuff common room. Severus hissed and lowered his wand. Maybe, with any luck, the hungry stones down that corridor would eat him.

It all started because of those mindless Ravenclaw seventh-years who decided it would be fun to practice a sex magic ritual in Hogwarts at midnight on a new moon night.

Severus still had no idea what they'd done or how exactly they'd managed it. Runes wasn't his area, and Bathsheda just started waxing lyrical about how wonderful and clever the students were when he asked, so he'd started ignoring her while she talked. But somehow the runes the seventh-years had used had had a lot of effects, including revealing hidden rooms in Hogwarts itself and making the stones in the dungeons come to life and try to eat anyone who was snogging or having sex anywhere near them.

Severus would have been all in favor of that last effect if they could have retrieved the students within a few hours, suitably chastised for groping each other in the corridors of a school. But instead, the stones put the students…somewhere. Severus had not the least idea where, only that Poppy's spells showed that they were still alive.

So that was a problem he had to solve. As was the students trying to pile into the formerly-hidden rooms.

And now, the bloody kingfisher. Who might also have been eaten by the stones, because when Severus and Minerva entered the corridor it had flown down, there was no sign of it.

Minerva threw up her hands. "I think it's time to call in the Aurors, Severus," she said, over the grumbling of the stones that included the words "disturbance" and "sex" and "evil."

Severus grimaced. As loathe as he was to bring himself to the attention of Aurors once more, he had to admit she was right.

"Headmaster Snape. Professor McGonagall. Greetings to you both."

Severus stared in silence at the man who had strode into his office and wondered if sex-obsessed, student-eating stones were really all that bad.

Harry Potter brushed soot off his robes and looked around as though waiting for the past Headmasters' and Headmistresses' portraits to interrogate him. When it didn't happen, he smiled briefly and turned back to Severus. His face was polite and utterly professional, which made Severus wonder what he was planning.

"I was briefed on the ritual that the students conducted to change the stones into what they are," he said. "But I must admit that I didn't understand it very well. Is there a way that I could talk to the students? Or to Professor Babbling?"

"Why would you understand it?" Severus snapped before he could stop himself. "Your expertise was never in Runes."

He ignored the chiding way Albus's portrait said his name, and the way Minerva sighed behind him, just keeping his gaze on Potter. If he was the only one who remembered the havoc that Potter could cause, very well. It just made him one of the few defenses that the school had.

"Headmaster?" Potter had the nerve to raise both his eyebrows with something like mischief lingering in the back of his expression. "As I remember it, your expertise was in Potions and not in running a school, and yet, I assume that you've learned new things since the end of the war. Trust that I have, too."

"Trust you—"

"Severus!"

Both Albus and Minerva spoke at the same time, so Severus wasn't sure whose voice was whose. He leaned back in his chair with a hiss, his arms folded, glaring at Potter. Potter only tilted his head a little and turned to speak with Minerva, who was promising to bring Bathsheda and the students along.

She swept out of the room, and Albus looked off to the side and hummed a little, which left Severus and Potter by themselves with no supervision. Severus thought this was the worst idea he'd ever heard. He stared at the wall and ignored the way that Potter cleared his throat.

"Headmaster?"

"What, boy?"

"Auror Potter, if you must." Potter's voice was a little cooler. "I don't expect you to like working with me, but I expect you to do it. Do you know for sure that the students who have been trapped by the stones are still alive?"

Severus stared at him. "Would you not go after them if they were not?"

A half-smile twitched at Potter's lips. "I'll try to get them back no matter what. But while I'll do anything for the living, I won't put my people at as much risk for bodies."

Severus considered that, then reluctantly nodded when he couldn't see anything actually wrong with what Potter was saying. Potter smirked at him as if to say that he understood Severus's thought processes and believed them laughable. Severus ignored that as much as possible.

"We're sure they're alive. Poppy's spells can still find them, just not a way to get close to them. And occasionally the students who wander the corridor—" because even the Slytherins were dunderheads who found the muttering stones too fascinating to stay away from completely "—say that they can sometimes hear them calling and complaining to be let out."

"Fascinating."

Severus glared at Potter, but he seemed to have said the word sincerely, without an ulterior motivation. He tilted his head slightly, fringe falling into his eyes as he thought. Severus frowned at the man as something else occurred to him.

Potter no longer looked so much like Potter—that was, James. He should have, since he still had the glasses and the dark hair, and it wasn't like growing up had done much to his facial structure. But somehow, his hair being longer and in a slightly different cut, and his eyes being more direct, made him look like Lily instead.

Severus buried that insight. It wasn't even an insight. It was an irrelevant idea that was bothering him because he had nothing else to do at the moment, but wait for Minerva to bring back the students and Bathsheda.

Luckily, Minerva soon returned, herding them. Potter stood up and turned around, bowing his head a little. "Thank you for coming," he said. "I'd like you to tell me about the runic circles that you created. Please put as much detail as you can into it. I know that you're intelligent, but I need a compressed description."

Severus would have thought the students would react to such crispness with sulking, much the way they had when scolded or asked about their process for creating the runic circles in the past. But they perked up, maybe because Potter was speaking as if they were adults, and the leader, Marian Greengrass, stepped forwards.

"We just thought we could create a circle that would interact with the motions of our bodies the way that wand motions interact with our magic…"

Potter was listening with intense focus as Greengrass, soon joined by the others, poured out their story. Now and then Bathsheda cut in with some commentary on what was likely to happen as a result of the odd runic circles, but for the most part, she seemed lost in her own daydreams of the theoretical possibilities of such circles. Severus was just as relieved. If he, with his own patience for esoteric magical theory, had been driven mad by Bathsheda's nonsense, he could only imagine what Potter's reaction would have been.

"I see," said Potter, when Greengrass's explanation finally stumbled to a halt. Severus withheld a snort. I doubt he sees. "I think I know what happened."

"How?" Severus demanded. "Not even our local Runes expert does."

Potter smiled a little, glancing once at Bathsheda. "It's possible that the professor does, but would find it hard to explain in words for anyone who doesn't have her specialized knowledge," he said. "But I've trained to recognize magical disasters and tipping points. It's part of the work that Aurors have to undergo, after all, or we wouldn't be very able in the field with actually countering those disasters."

"How can we become Aurors?" Greengrass demanded. "Do we have to have an Outstanding in our NEWTS in all subjects? That's what Mafalda Prewett said."

"For one thing," Potter said, his voice polite, "you have to commit to making sure that you understand the implications of any runic circle that you decide to put into practice."

Greengrass wilted, put in her place for the first time since the beginning of this episode. Severus nodded stiffly. Potter was good for something. And he didn't even gloat over Greengrass's expression before he turned so that he was facing Minerva and Severus.

"There were runic circles drawn on the ground, but the most important factor is the intention that was floating in the air. Both the intention to have sex, and the intention to create a new kind of runic circle." He ignored the giggles and snorts from the students at the word "sex," which further raised Severus's grudging respect for him. "That mingled with the magic of so many youngsters, and the magic of Hogwarts's stones, and imbued these stones with their own intentions. Only, because the circles backfired, it created a distaste for desire in the stones, instead of a complementary intention to propagate it."

"I must say that sounds very likely," Minerva said.

Severus stared at Potter, and finally nodded. It did sound likely. "Not that that tells us how to release the trapped students from the stones," he pointed out, because it didn't, and Potter had only done half his job. Anyone could have hit on that explanation if allowed to think about it long enough, instead of dealing with day-to-day crises and chasing kingfishers around the place.

"I think I have a place to begin," Potter said, standing. "I'll need to create a reversed runic circle of my own. Instead of the intention to speak with a stone, I'll need to focus on not speaking with a stone. And then reverse that intention with the help of the circle."

"I'll come with you," said Severus quickly.

"I think you'd better take Bathsheda, too," Minerva said. "She knows more about Runes than any of us."

"Yes, but rune-intention interaction was never my specialty," said Bathsheda, and smiled at Potter as if noticing him for the first time. Maybe she was, Severus thought. As far as he could remember, Potter had never taken Ancient Runes. "I think I'd be of the best service in building a protective circle around the one that you intend to construct, Auror Potter. That way, if something goes wrong, we don't have a larger mess on our hands."

"Or at least no larger than a single corridor and a wall stone." Potter smiled at Bathsheda, and Severus scowled. So much respect for her, a professor he'd never even had in class and who had done nothing to save the brat's bloody life, so little respect for Severus.

"I will still come with you," Severus announced.

"I wouldn't expect anything else of you, sir."

Severus wondered what the bloody hell that was supposed to mean, along with the chuckle from Albus's portrait, but of course he would never ask. He swept after Potter and out the door and down the moving staircase, determined to watch every step of building this runic circle. It would be just like Potter to multiply their disasters.

"The circles also opened these rooms?" Potter was staring at a cell-like space that had opened not far from the door into the Slytherin common room—not that Severus would reveal the common room to him if he had a choice.

"Yes. What, Potter, does that trouble your ingenious theory?"

Potter continued studying the new room for a few seconds, although Severus didn't know why. There was no sign that the room had ever been used, bar a mark on the wall that could have been where manacles were fastened, or simply a natural scar in the stone.

Then he turned around.

Severus recoiled. Those eyes had gone cold in a way that had nothing to do with Lily or James, passion or pranking.

"I realize that you still carry old grudges about because they're the only fire you have to warm you," Potter said in a low voice. "And I have more important things to insist on than you addressing me by title if you won't. But I'll insist that you sit out of this investigation and Professor McGonagall take over if you spend more time sniping at me than helping me figure out what happened to the Hogwarts students. You remember them? The real victims here?"

As with the students, Potter's words shouldn't have struck so hard, but they did. Severus managed to jerk his head in a nod, and Potter smiled and seemed to let the matter truly drop.

"Good. How many of these rooms opened?"

"Twenty-four," Severus said, and could only hope that his voice sounded as normal as Potter's. How had the bloody man changed in the years that he'd been an Auror? "Twenty of them in the dungeons, two on the second floor, and one each on the third floor and the fifth."

Potter tilted his head. "I see. And are all of them like this? Any bigger?"

"Most are this size or smaller." Severus stared at the cell-room so as to avoid meeting Potter's eyes. "However, the one on the third floor is big enough to have once been a ballroom or the like. And the one nearest but two to the Hufflepuff common room looks as though it might once have been a classroom." He glanced at Potter as he recovered his courage. "And does it change your theory and the runic circle you'll need to build?"

"Complicates it," Potter murmured, ignoring the bait in such a way as to make Severus wish he hadn't dangled it. "The students also had the intentions to create something new and reveal secrets, I think. That means that I'll have to build a second runic circle after the one I use to make the stones reveal where they're keeping the students. And that one will have to hold the intention to keep the rooms open, with the runes reversing it so that they're closed off again."

"That's not necessary."

"Oh?"

This time, the impact of Potter's eyes wasn't unexpected. Severus shook his head. "We could use the space. We only need to certify that the rooms aren't dangerous and won't close up again suddenly."

Potter nodded thoughtfully. "I'll examine the space more closely, but I believe I'll find that the rooms are secure and won't close unless a separate runic circle is created to make them do so. The desire to reveal secrets and have sex were both embedded in the single runic circle the seventh-year dunderheads made, but I have no need to duplicate it."

Severus blinked. "You use the word dunderheads as well?"

Potter's eyes gleamed for a second. "I learned from the best."

As he walked down the corridor, Severus followed him, frowning a little. That had sounded…humorous, instead of insulting. Severus had no idea why it would be, but he also couldn't deny his own intuition that this was an offer of alliance, not attempting to put him down.

And Severus wasn't foolish enough to reject that offer. Assuming that Potter had indeed grown up and wasn't secretly making a mockery of him.

A few more tests might be in order, to make sure.