In the few weeks that followed, he felt strangely energized. The staff announcement had been printed in the pages of the Prophet, and he had endured it. For now, his protective charms and the total ignorance of most people about where to find him at home had been most helpful.
He did go to Diagon Alley, a handful of times. And each time the heads turned, the faces followed him like flowers toward some dark sun. His wizard robes had come out of retirement and he thought of them sometimes as armor. They made it far easier somehow, to slip back into the old patterns, the coolness, the mask of indifference. As familiar as as an old set of clothes.
He had almost smiled, the first time he stepped into Slug and Jigger's when Slug the apothecary himself fell right off his stool at the sight of Severus stepping over his threshold.
"Mr-Professor, I mean Headmaster? Sir? What a very very long time it's been!"
"Professor will be quite adequate, Mr. Slug."
"Of course, sir. Delighted! That is to say-how can we help you?"
"I've only come to replenish my basic kit, and to place a substantial order to be delivered to Hogwarts before the first of September."
"Hogwarts? Yes, of course. I did see in the Prophet. Very lucky to get you back sir. Such an excellent potioneer as yourself. And with so many other talents-that is to say, ah. Well, very lucky."
He gave a small bow of acknowledgement and watched Slug continue to flounder through his flattery. Was it his imagination or did the little man's eyes keep flickering over to his left arm, trying to see what might be concealed there.
The order was placed in due course, though with many continued stammerings and once, the shooing away of some apprentices who had come from the back to have a look at him.
With his hand on the door and Slug looking most relieved, Severus turned as if in afterthought. "I seem to recall that in the past, it was common to receive some toad hearts near expiration in with the others, which of course spoils the barrel. I should be very disappointed to see anything but the freshest ingredients. My students may be dolts, you know, Mr. Slug, but if the quality of their potions were further depreciated by sub par toad hearts, I would be most...disappointed."
Slug was still reassuring him that he would package the order himself when the door swung shut.
And that was how it had been for the most part. He roamed about, looking purposeful and though he was met with some hostility, it was dwarfed by surprise and curiosity at his sudden reappearance. He could bear it. He was careful, however, to avoid even the turning that lead to Knockturn Alley. There could be no cause for further gossip. Once, he had seen a shop owner crouched down beside her front door, scrubbing at a yellow graffiti tag with a bucket of Mrs. Skower's Magical Mess Remover. The tag read Preserve Wizard Culture. He moved on and swept through the shops, sometimes not there to buy anything, just to stake some sort of claim: I am here. I may have left for a while, but I am here.
If, when he approached the dark door on Charing Cross Road, he looked around the muggle street for a moment or two, well, there couldn't be any harm in that. He never glimpsed her there in any case. The events of that day had been stored with her telephone number, a set of warm, otherworldly memories, firmly in the past.
Minerva could not disguise her obvious satisfaction with his decision to return. She had brought the potion from Horace in person again the following week and spoke animatedly about updating the textbooks, improving the store of school-owned cauldrons, and even turning one of the empty dungeon classrooms into a separate lab for the NEWT students.
"If we don't spend all the money, the grant won't be renewed in full, so I'm not opposed to dreaming big this year. As I think I said, Septima has revised her entire curriculum. Pomona has ordered dozens of new plants I've never even heard of. Our new muggle studies professor has put together some proposals for field trips, which I've really got to turn my attention to soon, and of course John Dawlish has-she seemed suddenly flustered, and he knew she was worried she would upset him with talk about Defense Against the Dark Arts.
"Well, all this to say, I'm very open to suggestions," she finished, somewhat awkwardly.
He listened and made suggestions, drew up lists of ingredients he would like added to the stores, and he could tell this pleased her. He liked the idea of an advanced potions lab, and asked that Dungeon number 6 be cleared out and made available.
When she looked at him curiously in the doorway on her way out, he could tell she was wondering what had made this change-if it had been her words that had shaken him up and gotten him to agree to come back to Hogwarts or if he had just been that terribly lonely. He was grateful that she didn't ask him to explain himself, however. He really had no good answer for himself.
He waited until she had gone to down the potion in full. The nightmares were still quite frequent without it, but lately they had been interspersed one night out of seven or so, with dreams about sitting under the lions in Trafalger Square, walking in safe anonymity though a crowd, following a figure in a yellow blouse, the smell of bergamot and vetiver in the air.
The night before he was to return to Hogwarts, time seemed to slow after the flurry of activity in the days that had preceded it. He had ordered all the new supplies he wanted, including workbenches and store cupboards for the new advanced potions lab, directing the bills to Minerva's office of course. He had reviewed and amended his contract, including some rather sarcastic notes, just for the pleasure of seeing what Minerva would tolerate. He wanted Slughorn's ridiculous old office. He wanted a personal house elf. He wanted a curry served at every dinner. In one respect, however, he had been foiled. Try as he had done, he couldn't seem to find a better textbook than Magical Drafts and Potions, a text they had been using for years at Hogwarts and which had been written ages ago by Arsenius Jigger, the partner of old Slug the apothecary. Nothing especially innovative had been published for years. He supposed it would have to do.
Now he felt suspended, with very little to do but wait, and with the return of silence and stillness, he began to have doubts about this course. To go back to Hogwarts, to be Professor Snape again-he felt the stupid inevitability of it. At times, he thought of backing out. There was still time. But the announcement had been made; he had let himself be seen. And to turn back now would appear cowardly. So there really was no turning back.
He packed those few belongings he would take with him. His teaching robes, a number of his books, his personal potioneer's kit and his second best cauldron. His lab at home was small but fairly serviceable. He had been brewing only for himself for some time, small simple potions: pepperup for when he was ill, a few half-successful attempts at scar removals, little nothings. He could have expanded his workspace with magic, but what would have been the point? No one was going to buy his brews. Or if they did, he didn't want them to buy them only because he was who he was-(BUY YOUR BOIL CURE FROM THE HOGWARTS MAN OF MYSTERY!). And as for the potion that Horace sent him, well, he didn't actually need it. It wasn't as though the nightmares were anything new.
He packed his store of pepperup. He might as well just give it to Poppy before it went off. And he took another tour around his little house, peering into dark spaces and drawers for things he couldn't leave behind. In the front closet was his father's jacket, still wrapped in plastic.
He'd never wear it.
He certainly didn't want to be seen in it.
He packed it.
He didn't hang around the next morning. He had increased the already tight security around his pitiful little house, keying the wards to recognize his wand only and recasting a few anti-muggle enchantments to keep any industrious real estate developers from getting too interested.
His trunk he transfigured into a small matchbox. He tucked it into an inside pocket of his robes and set off again to his preferred apparition point just outside of the little village. No one but the usual examples of scrawny wildlife was there to see him disappear from the muggle world.
One instant of horrible compression later, he was standing just outside a set of high gates, flanked by winged boars. He looked up at Hogwarts, the mullioned windows lighted here and there. It was beautiful, he knew. The place he had been happiest and most miserable. The place of which he had once been master and to which he returned now, humbled and diminished. He let his face relax into smooth lines, his mental shields rising like a reflex. For better or worse, he was home.