A POSITION OF RESPECT

This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.

A/N: Spoilers. Thanks to all my reviewers and wellwishers. I'm up and walking.

Snape strode through the empty corridor and turned into a long hall. Up two flights of stairs, down another corridor, left, left, right and up another flight. No one but the portraits, the Grey Lady and Mrs Norris with her kittens. Perhaps the children were too tired from the Leaving Feast to break curfew. He cast one scowling glance up and down the long straight passage and turned on his heel to investigate the Astronomy Tower.

'She asks too many questions,' he brooded. 'She's always asked too many questions. Aggravating irritating exasperating chit.'

Up and up. Tread lightly on the creaky step and bypass the trick one. Make sure all the children are safely back in their rooms before he could rest himself. He'd spent one endless, scarring night be-spelled to a high ceiling in second year; he'd make sure none of his charges ever underwent a similar experience.

Not that he'd get any rest tonight. Not with the memory of their last meeting screaming through his head.

They'd met five times since their first stroll through the bluebells, always settling into the same pattern, a mix of argument, quiet discussion, unadmitted longing and sudden anger. It was easy for him to listen as she talked about her still-troublesome dreams or her problems at work. He could even hear about her annoying friends and their silly lives without undue discomfort, if only she wouldn't keep asking him questions. Last week, she'd pressed him about his Death Eater days until he was almost ready to hex her.

"Your company would be more tolerable if you learned not to pry into what doesn't concern you." Must she flay off his skin and splay him bleeding and raw on the table so her greedy eyes could investigate the workings of his exposed inner self like a mad Muggle scientist?

"How can you say it doesn't concern me? How am I to understand, if you refuse ever to talk?"

It had been a struggle to keep his temper. He'd concentrated on sounding icy rather than molten with rage.

"Is your friendship dependent on knowing everything I've ever done?"

She'd jumped up and glowered down at him.

"I can't do this!" she'd proclaimed. "I can't keep telling you everything when you keep pushing me away. It's not prying to ask questions! It's not nosy to want to understand what makes you tick!"

He hadn't liked looking up. It was too reminiscent of his awkward schooldays, before he'd shot up and learned to stand tall. It brought back bitter memories of lying, body-bound or Stupefied, on the grass, in a ring of bragging bullies, their wands raised to hex him. He'd scrambled up to answer.

"I don't tick, I'm not a clock," he'd snapped. "I don't have to tell you anything. Let me be."

"If that's what you want!" She'd brushed the back of her hand across her eyes as she turned away. "You know where to find me, if you ever decide I'm worth talking to."

"Silly girl, of course I think you're worth talking to. I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

He'd reached for her hand, but she'd Apparated away leaving him standing. That had been eight days ago but his stomach still churned and his chest was hollow. Irritating, impossible, indispensable wretch of a girl!

He was at the top now. Through the half-open door, he could just catch a glimpse of long, lustrous, dark hair in the moonlight, a girl with a male arm around her waist. He racked his brains. Too tall to be that sixth year Ravenclaw and none of the other seniors had hair that length and colour. The hair too silky to be the Maskelyne girl, a scatterbrained fifth year Hufflepuff that he'd be glad not to see in his classroom next year. Unless – had she straightened it somehow?

He flashed back to the Triwizard Ball six and a half years ago and a very different bushy-haired girl, who'd stunned the school by appearing with hair straightened and shining, to open the ball with one of the champions. He hoped she wouldn't try that style again. The wild abandon of her usual curls was more appealing. Not that it mattered now. She'd returned his letter with a single sentence scrawled across the back, "You know my conditions."

Enough of that! He swept forward and placed his hand on the door sneering.

"Star-gazing the night away? I'll remember your detentions for next -"

Eyes widening he stopped short.

"Amory? Minerva?"

They had turned at his approach and Minerva's hands had gone instantly to her hair. He watched their half-amused, half-embarrassed exchange of glances as she expertly coiled it into her usual bun and a black blaze of jealousy flared up in his chest. A second successful round at love for them both, while he couldn't make it work even once. In an instant, the rage had burnt out into a grey-ash coldness of guilt. How could he begrudge them healing or happiness after their first loves' tragic deaths?

He couldn't look at them. One of the telescopes was pointing downwards. He straightened it mechanically.

"If you'd warned me, I'd have known not to disturb you."

He'd intended a tone of cold reproof, not hurt reproach. He turned to leave.

"Your presence could never disturb me, Severus," Amory said. "I'm pleased to have this opportunity to speak with you. You've barely looked up from your lists all week."

The post-exam period was blissfully empty for students, but for teachers it was a frantic dash to update all paperwork and inventory supplies for the following year. The deputy-head had all his own reports to finish, plus everyone else's to initial and approve.

"I suppose you don't want a third," Snape retorted.

Minerva's stern lips softened. She hadn't seen his eyes dull or his hands fidget since he was a sulky awkward teen. When he'd returned to teach, she'd barely recognised the armoured, elegant man who met defeat and victory alike with the same sour smirk and straight shoulders. So the boy was still there underneath.

"On the contrary, a third opinion is exactly what we need," she said crisply. "We've been discussing whether one of us should find another job."

"Another job?" He didn't want either of them to leave. He turned back to join them at the parapet, resting his hands on the ledge and frowning in thought. "Your scruples are unnecessary. The school would suffer more by your departure than any accusations of favouritism could produce. Who would replace you as head?"

"Yourself, perhaps? Don't you tire of teaching classes full of dunderheads?" she cut in, baiting her suggestion with his favourite term of description.

"Not enough to exchange them for the older, more ossified, dunderheads in the Ministry," he scoffed. "In any case, I'm decades younger than any previous head. The Governors would be more likely to choose an unpalatable stranger. And how long would we search for another competent Defense teacher if you left, Amory? You're the first in decades to last more than a year."

"You don't think it will cause problems?" Minerva probed.

"Nothing we can't handle." He scowled. "It may mean a little extra wrangling over budget allocations and duty rosters at staff meetings," one of the banes of his life, "but not enough to warrant another search for staff. We've had to replace too many already." Hooch, Dumbledore, Hagrid and DADA all in the last three years.

"Very well, if the Governors don't object, we'll both stay."

Snape nodded, thin lips set and black eyes staring out at the black night sky. He didn't want to look at them. He supposed that somewhere inside he was happy for them, but their content threw his own depression into bitter relief.

"I've missed our meetings," Amory said, after a long slow survey under heavy brows of the brooding man by his side. "We've barely spoken since before the exams."

The younger man's head was bowed and his hands tight on the parapet. It was an invitation that hurt as much to accept as to refuse. He glanced sideways at Minerva, considering whether he was desperate enough to speak in front of her.

She'd been his teacher once. He hadn't liked her then, but they'd been teaching alongside each other for twenty years since, most of that time as rival Heads of House, and antagonism had gradually softened into respect. She wasn't a gossip. She was a straight-backed, hardheaded, sensible woman, Amory's chosen, and therefore included in their Oath of friendship. Perhaps her insight into the female perspective might be useful.

Quietly, he said, "I don't know how to do it. Any of it." His face twisted and his hands clenched tight. "Friendship." His Adam's apple bobbed up and down. It was even harder to say the next word. He'd never dared voice it till now. "Love."

Conscious that if she pushed he might never dare confide in her again, Minerva checked the exclamation of surprise on her lips. Love?

Amory nodded, hazel eyes thoughtful.

"It's new, unfamiliar."

Snape pushed away from the parapet.

"If it were only that!" he burst out. "She wants to know -"

He shook his head and his shoulders slumped. Minerva broke the silence.

"To know what?"

Dark eyes burned with exasperation.

"Everything. My entire life in detail. Where, what, why, how. Most of all, why."

"Can't you tell her?" Minerva asked, then bit her lip. She didn't need to see the goaded sneer on his lips to know it was there. "Sorry. I suppose you've never told anyone. Unless Albus?"

He shook his head. He'd allowed Dumbledore to freely Legilimise him the night he'd turned himself in and then after every Death Eater meeting but he'd never brought his experiences so far into the realm of acceptance as to put them in words. Even at the trials, he'd spoken only of others' crimes, not his own. He'd bargained successfully for that evidence to be Pensieve testimony.

"Well, surely there must be some things you don't mind speaking about, something unconnected with that part of your life," Minerva argued. "It was only a couple of years."

"No," he snapped.

She didn't understand. How could she? Those few years had been the defining period of his existence. Everything he'd done before or since was part of it, either as preparation or reparation. Could he disconnect his schoolboy tormentors from the surrogate victims he'd pasted their faces on for hexing practice at revels? Tear away his teaching experiences from the self-recriminations and espionage considerations that had held him to a job he'd only slowly learned to tolerate?

Amory laid a restraining hand on Minerva's arm. His love had strong common sense, but she was a little too impatient to suit his reserved friend.

"You wish she'd stop asking," he suggested. "Learn to take you as you are?"

Before Minerva's astonished eyes, the lean, pale face softened.

"As well ask a river to flow up into the sky." Thin lips curled up in affectionate remembrance. "She's always wanted to know everything about everything, even as a student. She wouldn't be Her – herself if she stopped asking questions."

Minerva gasped. An ex-student – voracious appetite for learning – Ricky's jealousy -

"Severus? Hermione Granger? Was it true then?"

"Of course not. It had never even entered her head then – despite all his efforts to put it there." He scowled. "What does it matter? She won't even speak to me now."

"Transitions are painful," Amory mused. "Eyes accustomed to darkness need time to get used to the sun."

"Appeal to her love of learning to set up a meeting," Minerva suggested. "Then ask her for time. She's a sensible, patient girl. She'll understand."

It was good advice as far as it went. He thought it over as he filed and sorted, as he wrote orders and signed invoices, as he prepared applications to the school board and perused their answers, as he copied names and sent out notices and supply lists to new students and returning students, as he visited Muggle families and held orientation meetings and Diagon Alley tours. He ruminated in the morning, under the bright midday sun, or in the cool of his office as he brewed, when the evening drew close, and through long wakeful nights.

By the time school resumed, the sharp agony had subsided to a dull empty ache, but it was still unbearable. He wrote again.

Three days later, Hermione was crumpling his letter between nervous fingers as she knocked on his door. It had been short and curt and entirely Snapish, "If you still wish to learn to brew Wolfsbane I'll be starting a batch on Friday at 7 p.m." and she should have thrown it away, but she couldn't.

"Enter."

How that took her back! Three years ago, he'd called her in with exactly that intonation and she'd stumbled through an apology to his bored and unrelenting stone-face. She hoped this interview would go better, but she was determined that she wouldn't be the one apologising this time.

"I do still want to learn Wolfsbane," she challenged him as soon as she'd closed the door behind her, "but I won't be manipulated. That wasn't really why you wrote, was it?"

He had stood up as she entered and was waiting by his desk. His lips tightened.

"Is it manipulation to wish for the favour of your company by any means I can contrive?" he asked.

"I don't know. It depends whether you're trying to mend our disagreement or ignore it."

"Will you give me the courtesy of a chance to reply before you run away this time?"

"I don't know what to say," she whispered despairingly. "What do you want me to say?"

One brief, searing, black-eyed glance, then he looked down again.

"Anything you choose except goodbye."

His temper lines were deeply marked. She had a sudden ridiculous fancy to smooth them away with a finger, like a child correcting misshapen letters in a copybook. She licked her lips nervously.

"I don't want to say goodbye. I've missed you too. Rather a lot."

So much that she'd dug out all her old Potions essays to remind herself just how nasty he could be. It hadn't worked. Impossible to read, "Written like a leaky tap; perhaps a wit-sharpening potion would stop up the overflow," with the same feelings now.

His unguarded look brought her halfway across the room before the endless weary arguments of the last two months stopped her.

"It's no use," she muttered. "If you're always going to be a closed book, this won't work. It would be kinder not to try."

Brown eyes watched black through a long hopeless silence. Just as she began to turn away, he called her back.

"Wait!"

She waited. Breathing hard, he closed his eyes and bowed his head, his fisted hands white with tension.

"There are some things I can never and will never discuss." Things I won't let myself remember; things that would make you hate me. "Leave my Death Eater years alone and I'll try to answer anything else."

Her heart was trembling, but her voice was steady.

"Will you tell me why you joined?"

Behind the curtain of greasy hair, she could just see his eyes snap open and his lips tighten as if to refuse. Her throat was full of sharp rocks; her eyes were prickling, but she wouldn't back down.

At last, he spoke, his voice barely audible.

"It seemed better than the alternative."

She gulped.

"What was the alternative?"

One flat word fell into the empty hush.

"Nothing."

"You mean – What do you mean?" she faltered.

"I entered Hogwarts with one ambition," he muttered, "to earn a position of respect." Respect but not love. He'd known even then not to hope for love. "I knew already I'd never have anything but by my own hard work. It was quickly brought home to me – perhaps you've also noticed - that neither talent nor effort meant anything without popularity, the accident of personal charm that made Potter and Black everyone's Golden Boys and me the black beetle under their feet."

She nodded. She hadn't realised till she left school how much of the respect she'd worked so hard for had actually stemmed from the reflected glory of her friendship with Harry Potter. The magical world was no meritocracy - unless merit was measured by name and smile wattage.

"In seventh year, I looked ahead into a future of the same perpetual, petty, daily humiliations." He shrugged. "And I decided I'd have none of it."

She caught her breath. If she could trust him not to answer, she'd have asked what he meant. As long as she didn't hear it in words, she could preserve the pretence of not knowing.

"But – you didn't –" she choked.

His mouth twitched.

"Bella found me. She hexed the vial into the fire and me into a Body bind while she raged at me." He rubbed his cheek in remembered pain. It had made quite a satisfying explosion. She'd slapped him hard for ruining her second-favourite robes."She told me of a leader who appreciated talent and ability, who'd let me earn the place I deserved. I joined the next day."

There was another long silence. He was still looking at the uneven patch of stone floor he always avoided walking over. She was still watching his face.

"If that's what drove you to join then what could drive you to leave?" she breathed.

His mouth twisted into grim brooding and his eyes were lightless.

"Respect from others is useless when you don't respect yourself."

A/N I welcome your opinion; should I have stopped this chapter earlier?

The Black Family Tapestry, released by JKR several months after this was written, revealed that Bella was several years older than Snape. However, too much of this fic would have to be altered to fit HBP-canon and beyond, so I've left it.