COWARD
1 May 1998; 22:55
She didn't know she was going to try to kill him until she did it.
"Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva?" he asked. "Because if you have, I must insist —"
She found herself casting the second Unforgiveable curse of her evening, a wordless Avada Kedavra she meant as fully as she'd ever meant any Expecto Patronum. And yet …
He was less than ten feet in front of her, but her spell flew wide of the mark, raising nothing more lethal than an explosion of green sparks from the wall behind him. She had no time to puzzle out her own failure to connect, however, because his Protego nearly knocked her off her feet.
He wasted precious time laughing at her stumble rather than immediately casting an offensive, a foolish mistake that surprised her.
Potter shouted behind her as she Transfigured a wall torch into a circlet of flames and sent it at Snape, intending to grab him by the neck and either throttle or scorch him into submission. It wasn't a spell he'd have been expecting from her, so even if he managed to escape it, she hoped it would catch him off balance and unable to counter immediately. But her flame-lasso missed him, and she cast a strong wordless and wandless shield, expecting a powerful attack from her opponent.
What he sent back, however, was a spell he'd used many times in their sparring matches, an ethereal black serpent with a gaping maw that she knew from experience would slither around her shield but would only sting a little when it swallowed her. It was a spell meant to distract, to tease, not to seriously harm or kill.
Fury enveloped her. Was he mocking her? Reminding her of the hours she'd spent training him in duelling as Albus had trained her, patiently teaching him how to control his powerful magic so that it would kill only if necessary and not by accident? It had been no accident that night on the Astronomy Tower, when Albus had been all but helpless, she thought bitterly. Severus could have avoided killing him, of that she was certain. He could have given Albus time to regroup, muster his wandless magic and escape the Death Eaters who'd had him trapped. But Severus had chosen to point his wand at the man who'd given him a chance to redeem himself. And he'd killed him.
As he was conspicuously failing to kill her, she realised.
He could do it — one thing she'd learned from their sparring over the years was that Severus's magic was stronger than hers, even if her control had been far better and her magic more mature when they'd first begun.
But rather than the devastatingly effective killing curse he'd aimed at Dumbledore, Severus had cast this … this private joke at her.
She backed away from the snake's snapping jaws, shielding Harry and Luna with her body, and exploded the creature with a slash of her wand. Without thinking about her next move, she Transfigured the remains of the snake into daggers and watched, half horrified, half exultant, as they flew at Snape, the vibration reverberating in her magic as the daggers sank into the armour he'd pulled in front of him.
Filius's voice came from behind her, and the crackle of a strong spell whizzed by her to batter at Snape's shield, but rather than relief at having competent reinforcements at hand, Minerva felt only rage as her opponent struggled against the now-animated armour that clutched at him.
He broke away and ran down the corridor, casting a Shield Charm behind him so that anything Minerva and her allies cast zinged harmlessly off his back.
He disappeared through the door to the old Alchemy classroom, and she followed, pulled onward by anger.
She didn't want to die, but his refusal to try to kill her made her question everything that had happened over the past few months. She wanted answers, and he wasn't going to give them to her.
He wasn't going to give them to her because he was Severus Snape, her enemy, but also because it was too late, and, she realised, he was about to die.
There was no way out of the Alchemy classroom except through her. He was trapped. He turned to face her. Any moment now, she would cast a killing spell, and he would crumple to the floor.
"No," he whispered.
He turned, took three steps backwards, and ran at the large window at the end of the room. The sound of it shattering filled the air around her, and she was only dimly aware of Filius and Pomona arriving, panting, beside her as she beat her hand against the empty window frame, bloodying it on the broken glass.
When she looked out into the darkness, she nearly laughed at her own stupidity. She should have known Severus would have a backup plan. His suicidal leap hadn't been that at all. Silhouetted against the moonlight, a black form swooped through the sky over the courtyard, graceful as he he'd never been on the ground.
A sound broke through the night, and it took a moment before she recognised it as her own voice.
"Coward! COWARD!"
24 December 1995; 22:18
Severus caught Minerva's eye and gestured to the door with a subtle tilt of his head. Her nod was equally imperceptible to everyone around them. Or so she hoped.
She went to the small cadre of her colleagues who were gathered around the large table that sat in the middle of the Hog's Head's back room and put down her wine glass.
Albus was holding court, in the middle of some story about a Transfiguration experiment gone hilariously awry, and Hagrid, several tankards of beer into the evening, howled with laughter and pounded the table with a ham-sized fist, making the dishes on it jump and slosh potatoes and gravy onto the table's surface.
Filius used his wand to clean things up and, Minerva noted with approval, discreetly waved it at the tankard occupying Hagrid's other hand, no doubt Transfiguring its contents into something less potent than Aberforth's traditional Christmas stout.
She put a hand on Albus's shoulder and bent down to say in his ear, "I'm heading back now. Severus and I will take care of this evening's rounds, so you all should stay as long as you like."
"Thank you, my dear," he said, patting her hand. He wouldn't be far behind her, she knew, but they'd both agreed that the other staff needed an extra helping of Christmas cheer away from the pink nightmare that had invaded the school this year. The official holiday gathering in the staff room had been more like a wake — not only had the music been insipid and the drink non-alcoholic and sweet, but everyone had been terrified of being caught under the Charmed mistletoe with Umbridge. Albus, bless him, had taken one for the team and given her a quick buss on her aggressively fuchsia lips, signalling the end of the death-march-cum-Christmas-party Hogwarts's High Inquisitor had arranged.
The real party had been surreptitiously moved to the Hog's Head, thanks to Pomona's foresight in booking the back room with Aberforth and swearing the rest of the staff to secrecy.
Minerva gathered her cloak from a hook in the front room and slipped out the door into the frigid air. It was refreshing, after the boozy heat of the Hog's Head.
Severus was waiting at the head of the path back to Hogwarts.
"You could have stayed," he said, falling into step beside her.
"I was ready to go. There may only be seven students staying this Christmas, but I don't want to leave them alone with Dolores for too long."
"I think they're safe for a few hours," he said. "I may or may not have instructed Brocklehurst to invite the other students to the Ravenclaw common room for the evening."
"Did you indeed?"
"Of course. We both know there's no way Umbridge could answer the riddle to get in."
Minerva snickered.
"As it happens," she said, "I may or may not have asked Dobby to lay in a supply of butterbeer and Christmas biscuits for the Ravenclaw common room."
She felt rather than saw his smirk, and it warmed her.
They walked in companionable silence, their footfalls making comforting scrunching noises in the fresh snow.
When they reached the castle, all seemed quiet. The dim candlelight from the wall sconces flickered over the army of "Educational Decrees" nailed to the wall like Luther's Ninety-five Theses to the Wittenberg church wall.
"It's a bit early, but I'd like to take care of rounds now," Minerva said. "There's a bottle of something warm and peaty waiting for us in my rooms, if you'd care to join me afterwards."
"That would be acceptable."
"I'll do the towers and upper levels, you do the classrooms and dungeons?"
"Obviously."
An hour and a half later, they were in her sitting room, enjoying the wizarding Speyside single-malt Minerva's brother Malcolm had sent her for her birthday.
Minerva sat back and surveyed the chessboard, eyes narrowing.
"You can move your king wherever you like, but you're still going to be in check," Severus said.
"I'm not going to move my king. Rook to A-one." Her white rook slid all the way across the board back to the first file.
Severus frowned. "Rook to H-eight." His black piece moved into file, once again menacing Minerva's king. "Check."
"King to E-seven."
"Rook to H-seven. Check."
"King to E-eight."
"What are you up to, Minerva? King to F-six."
Minerva smiled. "Rook to F-one."
He leaned forward, eyes jumping from his pawn, king, and rook to her rook and king, and back again, clearly searching for a way to regain the advantage.
He sat back. "Shit."
"I do believe it's a draw, Severus."
"For fuck's sake."
"Don't be so sour. You didn't lose," she said as she began plucking the pieces from the board and putting them back in their box while Severus sat there, arms folded crossly across his chest.
"I didn't win, either."
"Winning isn't everything."
"It is if you're a Slytherin," he muttered, rousing himself to help her put away the last of the chess pieces and fold the board away into its case.
"Instead of sulking, why don't you pour us whatever's left in the bottle," she suggested, putting the chess set in the drawer of her small desk.
He complied, silently handing her her glass and clinking it with his.
"Slàinte."
"Do dheagh shlàinte," she answered.
He sipped his drink, then looked at his glass, tilting it to swirl the whisky.
"This is very good," he said, and she recognised it as an apology for his post-game sulk.
"It is, isn't it?"
They sat on her sofa, both savouring the last of a very good whisky indeed.
She said, "I hadn't realised you were a whisky drinker. Before we started … this."
What this was, she thought, was friendship, although she was wise enough not to name it to him.
It had begun after she'd slept next to him the previous summer. She'd left before morning, and they hadn't remarked on it afterwards. But the following week, for the first time since he'd come to Hogwarts to teach, he'd come to her quarters for a drink.
She'd run into him returning from Hogsmeade and made the invitation on the spur of the moment. It had been days since she'd seen anyone; other than Hagrid, Severus, and herself, there was no one in residence during that summer, and it was a big castle. The idea of sitting alone in her rooms after a solitary dinner was unpalatable, but she had little desire to go to the Three Broomsticks or anywhere else for the company of people she scarcely knew.
His acceptance had surprised her; he'd refused all previous invitations over the years, whether from her or Filius or Pomona, and the Laphroaig she'd brought to his rooms as a peace offering that one time hadn't tempted him.
What surprised her more was that it had continued on a more-or-less weekly basis. When term had begun, they'd kept up the habit, and also the pretence that they were nothing more than colleagues and rivals for the House cup. She'd found herself looking forward to Friday evenings, trading wry observations, discussing magical theory, playing chess, and drinking her whisky with him. He was still sharp and acerbic, but somewhere along the line, their conversations had acquired a depth they'd never had. Slytherin through-and-through, Severus never said anything too directly, but she frequently had the sense that he was sharing things that were important to him, feelings and experiences couched in ideas or arguments, and she found it stimulating in a way that she hadn't felt in ages.
She didn't question it; his increased presence in her life was like a late-autumn blossom, unexpected and welcome, a reminder that life had some colour even on the brink of what was sure to be a harsh winter.
She watched him take another swallow of whisky.
"I've developed a taste for Scotch," he said.
Maybe it was the drink, but she heard it as a double-entendre. He wasn't looking at her, though; instead, he was peering into his glass and swirling the liquor around before tossing back the dregs.
She wasn't drunk. She'd only had one glass of wine at the Hog's Head, and what she'd had of the whisky certainly wasn't enough to make her squiffy, but there was a pleasant buzz in her head, and her face was warmer than the fire in her grate would warrant.
"Well …" she said.
"Well?"
"It's late. I expect everyone's back by now."
"And the Toad is none the wiser."
"Still …"
He was staring at her as if trying to puzzle out some mystery behind her face. She felt herself flush, and she suddenly realised how aware she was of him, of his physical presence.
He ran two potion-stained fingers over her cheek, gentler than she could have imagined, had she ever allowed herself to think of such a thing. His fingers continued hesitantly to her lips, his touch more a question than a statement.
She leaned into him, took his fingers in her mouth, sucking on each before releasing them. She pulled his head toward hers and kissed his lips. She unfastened her robe and laid herself bare, wanton as she hadn't been since before Elphinstone died. She —
She did none of those things.
Instead, she stood, smoothing her skirt with her palms to keep her hands from shaking.
"It's late. Thank you for coming up, Severus."
He blinked several times, then stood and went to the door. Framed in the open doorway, he turned to look at her again.
"Coward," he whispered. Then he was gone.