MELTING THE FROST
Chapter Two: A Barbed Offer

No notes from me this time--just read and enjoy, and review, telling me what you like and don't like!
Harry Potter and all related entities are © J.K. Rowling and Scholastic Books, Inc.
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A week after Miss Flannigan's arrival and his incident with the toads, the return of students heralded the coming of fall. He watched the tiny lights bobbing in the distance of the lake's inky folds, like the leisurely gyrating of a raven's wings, with no great joy across his face. Candles hovered behind him and would occasionally drift closer like lost puppies, oblivious to his foul mood, and he'd have to reach behind himself to shoo them away, but otherwise he remained fixed before a wide hall window overlooking the bluff. Inside the carriages drawn not far away were some of the few people that he disliked more than Flannigan at the moment, everyone from Potter's celebrity son to Lucius's brat. The boys couldn't be more different, but Severus hated them equally; it pained him to have to put on an air of adoration and paternal concern for one, to preserve his delicate guise, but he more than made up for it with his constant torment of the other.

"Professor Snape?" questioned the wisened voice behind him, softly; he suspected its owner was squeezing the last bit of kindness from her demeanor in preparation for the sternness she'd be showing for the school year. "You'd better get to the Great Hall. The students will be arriving in a few minutes, and as soon as I give the first years an introductory speech it'll be time for the Sorting Hat Ceremony."

He nodded; pulled himself away from the glass with a final longing gaze to the dark of the night as if it were the only illumination. "All right, McGonagall. I was just making sure Potter and Weasley weren't executing another of their grandiose entrances, of which they are so fond."

Her thin lips pressed into an amused smile, and he stalked away. McGonagall took some kind of twisted pride in those miscreants and was more than obliging when it came to bending the rules for them just because they were in her House. Never mind that they'd snuck out of their tower past curfew, exited the School despite strict orders to the contrary, disobeyed explicit regulations more times than he could count—oh, sure! They'd foiled Lord Voldemort here and there, but at what cost? Honestly, that woman needed to get her priorities straight.

Some of the other teachers had already gathered at their table in anticipation of the new students' arrival; he was pleased to see that Flannigan was not among them. A few nodded respectfully to him as he eased himself into a chair between Professor Trelawney (who was studying wrinkles in the table runner with rapt horror) and an empty seat—McGonagall's, no doubt. Dumbledore arrived shortly after him, placing a stool with the Sorting Hat most ceremoniously in the centre of their elevated stage. Most of the assembled gave him a noble bow of their heads as he edged behind the faculty's dining table.

Teachers trickled in one by one, and Snape was very satisfied indeed that there was no sign of Miss Flannigan (the thought of calling her Professor still made his skin prickle), even once the older students had rushed in and McGonagall paraded the First Years about to the Sorting Hat. He tried very hard to pay little attention to them as they gawked at the bewitched welkin draped upon the ceiling over their heads, at the rows and rows of older students, and the inevitable gasps, in turn, as they passed a particular Gryffindor—"It's Harry Potter!"—who would just give them a humble smile and gesture that they continue on. Instead of plugging his ears for the Sorting Hat's song like usual, he feigned interest when Trelawney tugged at his sleeve and pointed animatedly at a place where the thread had knotted.

Thus began yet another insignificant year in his mundane routine, forever doomed to be Potions Master at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the most scenic view in the world to watch your whole life slide away.

Thirty-five new Gryffindors—their banquet table was getting especially crowded this year: everyone wanted to be a Harry Potter, he guessed; the usual smattering of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, and a dismal clump of Slytherins, most who looked almost disappointed and would give dirty looks to the Sorting Hat as they yanked it off. He did his best to appear upset by this. Oh, surely he loved Slytherin as strongly as the day that old Sorting Hat placed him in it, but even he could not deny the disproportionate amount of followers of Dark it turned out, and each one was just another he'd be sent to tail, to spy upon, to befriend… Really, could there be a more taxing job than his? And they were getting worse, too—openly displaying their racist tendencies against the Muggle-born children, and showing no concern whatsoever for discretion. It was all he could do to keep up the ruse of undying admiration and blatant favouring to the pampered lot without losing his mind, really, seeing to it that they got away with such little effort when theirs was supposed to be the house of ambition.

But then, that was his intent: to weaken them.

Dumbledore began to make his announcements for the new term. "Our newest Defence of the Dark Arts teacher for this year" —he had to raise his voice to be heard over some snickers—"is Professor Flannigan, joining us from her expeditions in the Isles with the Ministry." He glanced to the empty seat beside Snape at the table and frowned. "I'm sure she will be joining us later. Moving on, then… I would like to remind all students that, as usual, the Dark Forest is strictly off-limits, as is this year the top floor of the Eastern Tower, and that this year we will be—"

But no one found out what they would be doing this year, for Professor Flannigan chose that moment to come exploding from the enormous doors to the Great Hall. With a creaking that filled the chamber as the doors parted for her, she stamped angrily between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables and the toad on her shoulder shot dirty looks all around. She did not say a word before reaching the teacher's table, but her face contorted as she obviously fought back an outburst.

"Forgive me, sir," she grunted in a low voice, which Severus had to strain to hear, "but someone decided it would be very humourous to set my toads loose in the hallway." Many teachers' accusing stares shot to the Gryffindor table where the Weasley twins, now in their final year, sat with doleful looks on their matching faces.

Dumbledore waved her to the empty seat on Severus's left side, and there was no missing the curling of her lip at the sight of him, but she relented and plopped down beside him. "There may still be some loose down in your dungeons," she hissed as Dumbledore resumed his announcements.

"I trust you'll see to their removal, then?" he glowered. "Of course, if you won't, then I'm always in need of a fresh supply of frog legs."

Appalled by his innuendo, she spun away to greet McGonagall at her other side, and he sat back, feeling satisfied with himself.

The announcements concluded, and their meals were conjured up and Severus had almost begun to enjoy himself, mostly for the silence on Flannigan's part, until Draco Malfoy deemed it necessary to sidle up to the teacher's table to chat. "You had a good holiday, Professor Snape, I'm sure?" he asked, restraining a broad smirk.

Severus knew exactly what he meant; were Lucius and Narcissa really so dense as to tell the boy everything that went on? With an uneasy fidgeting of his hands beneath the banquet table, he put on his most sinister smirk and retained cool confidence above. Had to look like he relished convening with that… filth—no single foul word could do their atrocities justice.

"Most," he said, voice as slick as chilled satin. "You shall have to extend my gratitude again to your father for me." A sensation like his nausea being tightly spun into a ball within his stomach overcame him as images of the summer's "festivities" returned to him. Etched into his eyelids now were the scenes, and blinking did no good if he wanted to hide.

Malfoy was satiated at that, and for a moment Severus hoped their conversation was over, but then they boy only leaned in closer, his juvenile eyes narrowing in an inexperienced replica of his father's. "He wishes me to personally relay a message to you." The amused blush playing around the boy's delicate face indicated he surely thought himself very sly; Severus could feel his dinner threatening to come up. "When can we speak about it…?"

He quickly wiped his mouth with a napkin to conceal a grunt of disgust (and partly also because Trelawney had been eyeing the napkin for several minutes now, threatening to seize it from him if he didn't make use of it). "You may visit me in my office this evening. We'll talk then."

Fortunately, Draco took it as the dismissal it was intended to be, and with a patronising bow, he whisked himself off to the Slytherin table.

"Disgusting!" a voice squawked from his left.

Only briefly startled, he spun to face an appalled Flannigan. "What is it, Professor?"

"That—that—boy," she gasped, seemingly overtaken with shock. "I saw him bullying these poor little Hufflepuffs in the hall, and it was just disgusting!" She shook her head. "The names he called this one girl, I couldn't believe it… I had half a mind to dock twenty points from his House, if only I knew his name…"

Severus scowled; if words like Mudblood were going to make her rankle, she was in for a most unpleasant surprise at Hogwarts. She called herself a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor—she'd never see half the wretched darkness he'd endured, and still had to suffer under from time to time. Instinctively, whilst clutching at his arms, he slid two fingers beneath the cuff of his left sleeve to rub at the Dark Mark he knew was still there, and would forever be.

"And he's your House, isn't he?" she continued, with a new fierceness in her hot eyes. He tried to avoid her glare (matched by her toad's) by scraping at his food some more. "And you're all cuddly-wuddly with him, aren't ye, and think it's just fine and proper that you Slytherins go bullying round everyone else without a care, because—oh, you're the only real wizards, you're the only ones with any real ambition or talent—"

At that moment, Severus had an overwhelming urge to slap her for her pomp and naivete, or at very least wave his hands about with frustration, but seconds before Flannigan's speech had concluded Trelawney on his right deemed it appropriate to snap up his palm and begin tracing the wrinkles in it with a healthy chorus of "Oh, my!" and "Ah, I see…" so he settled for narrowing his eyes at her instead. "Only been here a week, Flannigan, and you think you've got it all sorted out; that it's as clean-cut as that." The freckles on her face seemed to stand up in defiance as she flushed with anger. "Don't meddle in affairs that don't explicitly concern you—or didn't Dumbledore inform you of that when you were hired?"

He wrenched free from Trelawney's examination of his palm but Flannigan had already turned away to look at her half-eaten course, plaintive. "Wizards shouldn't talk to fellow wizards and witches like that, is all I'm sayin', and you shouldn't be encouraging it, neither."

Surely he was exhausted; for once a skillful evasive retort didn't spring to mind. She saved him from silence, however, by adding, "An' your dark, secretive airs don't impress me much, either. That's the trouble with you Slytherins—you hold so much in, whether it's worth it or not, that it makes you so unbearably boring."

Trelawney was apparently waiting for their argument to end so she could reveal a dismal future for him, but he didn't give her the opportunity; drawing his cloak around him he swept from the faculty table and never glanced back, through the corridors, down the stairwells, into the dungeons and straight to his office. A rubber frog had been deposited at his door (a start-of-term gift from the Weasley twins, no doubt; he made a mental note to take twenty points from Gryffindor) and he threw it at the opposing wall, which caused it to explode with blue-green sparks and a thick putrid smoke. After a few vain waves of his hand to clear the stench he gave up and ensconced himself in the office chair.

What of this sudden temper of his? Even the likes of Potter and his entourage travelled a longer fuse to his nerves than this woman did, and it wasn't his nature at all to not have a disingenuous subterfuge to sticky questions about his practises. Maybe the constant rejection of appointment to her post was eating away at him even more than he had acknowledged; he always had a deeply jealous instinct like that. Malfoy, too, reminding him of the Deatheater horrors of the summer were enough to shake the strongest, hollowest of men that way. And hollow he certainly was: just an inhuman husk to play a pawn for whatever side cared to push him more…

Unsure how long he sat there brooding, staring morosely at a crack in the plaster of the suffocating office walls, he was jolted by a tentative knock at the door. "Who's there?" Not that he mattered—it was, doubtless, no one he cared to speak to.

"Draco, sir." The Malfoy sneer was audible in the way he said the words.

"Yes, come in. Lock the door behind you." The boy did as told, but had a way of carrying out orders so leisurely, as if they had been his idea in the first place. He remained standing at the far end of the narrow office from Severus, hands clasped in front of him, a surly look to his smooth, still boyish features. Severus once more felt revolted that Lucius would loop the young twit into these barbaric matters; revolted, but not surprised. "Be seated. Now you had a message for me?"

Draco somehow managed to make a perfectly postured sitting resemble a careless sprawl. "Father first asked me to thank you for your assistance this summer–" inwardly, Severus blanched—"and added that, upon hearing about the newest appointment to the DADA position, he's curious to know why you'd been passed up for a newcomer to the teaching scene and would be very interested in taking to question the school governors."

Now Snape's stomach was rolling. Only Lucius could, in one sentence, dredge up a most nightmarish reminder of works for the Dark Lord that—in name, at least—he still served, and follow it with a vague promise at Severus's greatest dream. But even Malfoy's conniving brain, twisted though it was, could not realise the irony of the situation he'd just placed Severus in. To ensure Lucius would follow through with his "request" of the governors, he would have to endure so many more slaughters like the last, to keep up Lucius's good favour. Dumbledore had been distraught enough by his most recent reports; he wasn't sure he could bear much more chaos… But then, Flannigan stood to be perhaps the easiest of all the recent string of DADA teachers to pick off, with maybe the exception of Lockhart, and surely it couldn't take too much pressing for Lucius's suggestion to work…

Severus only cradled his chin in thought and dared not meet eyes with Draco as he debated. "Tell your father I appreciate his offer, then, and shall consider it. Is that all, Malfoy?"

Then came an unusual sight: that haughty face became troubled and conflicted. "Well," he began, drawling. "I just… wondered if maybe you could tell me… what it's like, you know. Father doesn't like to tell me much, especially when Mother's around, but he said maybe I could go with them in a year or two…"

It took effort to not let his jaw drop. Here was Malfoy's son, afraid; he didn't know what to expect. For a minute, he could almost empathise—the promises of power were always so much fuller than when they were fulfilled.

"You should be in the Slytherin Tower now. Don't let anyone see you as you exit the dungeons."

Draco looked disappointed as he permitted Snape to shuffle him out the door but didn't protest. Severus returned to his chair and sat for a long while, weighing, before he could retire himself to bed.

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This chapter's title came from a concept in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series: "An Aes Sedai's gift always comes with a hook." Thanks again for keeping with me! Chapter Three might take me a couple weeks, but it's coming.