One last thing.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank you, Albus," Severus intoned reluctantly as he offered the older wizard a brandy.

"For connecting your new fireplace to the Floo Network?" the Headmaster questioned as he settled onto a plump leather couch.

"Yes. I had not realized how disconnected I had been feeling until you arrived. I will wring your neck, you old bat, if you tell anyone, but I was actually beginning to miss the English wizarding community. Now that I can appear there at will, it's no longer an issue for me," the younger man explained haltingly (unused to such personal conversation), before settling into a stiff-backed armchair near the fireplace.

"Well, Severus, I'm glad you're in a good mood." Snape's eyes narrowed and flashed up to meet Dumbledore's.

"What do you want?" he demanded icily.

"Now, now, why can't I just be happy for you?"

"You may be, but that comment implies that there's something you've been holding back. What is it?"

Albus ran his long fingers through his mane of hair nervously. "We discovered the identity of the wilder." Snape's eyes widened slightly, and he angled his body forward subconsciously. "Her name is Kaira Andersen, and she's a philosophy major." The other man's eyebrow arched upwards mockingly.

"How useful."

"Yes, I think so," Dumbledore replied, no mockery in his tone. "Anyhow. . . she has already received college credit for Chemistry, so she will never be enrolled in your department."

"How did she receive credit?" Severus demanded.

"Advanced placement exams. Anyway, the Order has decided that your. . . efforts will be needed in a slightly different context." Dumbledore snatched his brandy off the table and drained it; his host noticed the gesture, and found his insides congealing into ice.

"We're going to need you to teach in the Philosophy deparment."

"WHAT?! Have you lost your MIND!!!" The black-clad wizard had leapt to his feet, his voice reverberating around the mostly empty living room.

"You are qualified to teach entry level courses, at least, and that's the only place where we can be sure Miss Andersen will find you on her course schedule. I know this is rough, but-"

"You have no idea!" Severus screamed, his arm arching gracefully back, snapping forward, and launching his crystal decanter smoothly into the wall. The shards arced away from the point of impact and skittered across the tile floor with a musical tinkle that seemed dreadfully out of place. "You bastard, you have no idea! You force me to teach idiots at that damn school for a decade and a half, force me to risk my life time and again for people I don't give a damn about, then you force me to uproot to a new country, to teach Muggles, and now you're telling me I'll be teaching fucking PHILOSOPHY??? What the hell. . . I'm the most philosophically, ethically, and metaphysically challenged man next to Voldemort himself. You have NO idea what you're doing."

"I never forced you to do any of those things," the Headmaster replied quietly. "They were your choices."

"I was coerced!"

"By your conscience, but not by me. Not by any of us."

"There was never a real choice," Severus said, biting out each word.

"The fact that your options are unsavory by no means proves that you never had them. That illogical, Professor," Dumbledore chided sternly.

"Damn you," Severus muttered quietly, defeated. Albus drew his wand and gestured towards the general area where the decanter had fallen. Immediately, the shards raced back together and flew back to the table. With another flourish, it filled the two glasses with newly summoned brandy seemingly of its own accord before settling back down onto the wooden surface.

"Drink." Severus obeyed numbly, his movements mechanical and his narrowed eyes cold.

"All the details have been attended to by the Order. Everyone will believe you are Professor Severus L. Snape, with a PhD from Cambridge in philosophy. We have even prepared your office in your new department. You will be teaching three classes this semester. . ."

Dumbledore continued explaining various aspects of this new mission, his voice gradually regaining its usual cheerfulness. Severus listened with half a mind, but otherwise drifted through various, disconnected memories from his long-gone youth.

"There is one last thing, Severus." Obsidian eyes flashed up to meet cerulean ones.

"I have built you a laboratory where your guest bedroom was." Snape's heart leapt, but he continued to scowl.

"That room was too small," he replied tersely. Dumbledore flashed him a toothy grin.

"See? Things will work out well for you here; you're already thinking like a muggle," the Headmaster teased. Severus, unable to contain his boyish glee, raced from the sparse living room, down the hall, and into his second bedroom.

Magically expanded to twice what his old laboratory had been, this space boasted a twenty foot ceiling with an entire wall of carefully categorized ingredients, another wall supporting shelf after shelf of books, and the wall straight ahead holding cabinets for his numerous cauldrons and other equipment. Work tables filled the center of the room, most with burners and stirring rods built in.

Severus felt his knees weaken as he gazed at this new, infinitely better laboratory. He could make this a home. He could come to enjoy being in this country, as long as this work place was here. He could live here.

With a shiver of awareness, Snape realized that Dumbledore had just cast some kind of spell. . . Startled, his eyes flew upwards to the ceiling, which now rumbled with a primordial thunderstorm of violent red and gray and black.

"Thought this might come closest to matching your usual temperament," the Headmaster chuckled behind him. Snape lowered his head, in acceptance and in atonement- he did not deserve such understanding. He did not deserve so many second chances. But when his eyes began to prickle with unshed tears, he forced his emotions to subside, and hoped dearly that Dumbledore would leave quickly, before he lost control.

When Severus turned, he found that Albus had already left.

I do not deserve to be understood so well, he thought.