Teacher and Student

There was not a single sound now, except for the occasional hotting of an owl.

Severus stood several feet away from the trampled path he had just left, uncertain whether the gap in the trees before him provided firm enough ground to tread on or not. Something to his right moved and he whirled around, discovering that there was no living being in sight, indeed, that the forest to both sides was pitch black and gloomy, as he had seen it so many times before, usually without knowing that he was about to enter it. He heard another crack, jumped, and quickly decided that it had probably not been produced by a human being.

It was hard to see the ground now. There were creepers everywhere and Severus had stumbled and fallen more than once during his adventure of leaving the castle to move South as fast and as far as possible. The tree to his right looked as though it had been hit with a carving charm, but Severus could not tell for sure what the ominous signs on it actually meant. A triangle was pointing back to where he had come from, another sign, vaguely arrow-like, to where he assumed Hogsmeade to be. There were letters, too, or at least they could be read as letters. Severus thought they looked vaguely like the Anglo-Saxon signs he and his classmates had been deciphering all year in their Ancient Runes lessons, but he had never done his homework very thoroughly and it was hard to learn all the meanings by heart if you did not ever use them in your everyday life.

The boy jumped again. This time, the crack had been a lot louder and seemed to come from a part of the forest, where the trees were not covered in quite the same shade of black as the ones to his right hand side. The sun could not entirely have set behind the Western mountain range just yet. Blasted animals. He would try and set fire to the next rabbit that crossed his path. With a resentful sniff, Severus turned again – and froze.

A set of emerald green robes barred his way and, for shock and fear at the sudden realisation of what he was facing, Severus squeaked and tumbled, falling backwards over one of the creepers. He landed hard on his backside, roducing another squeal – of pain, this time. The deputy headmistress surveyed him through her square spectacles in unmoving silence.

"Mr Snape," she said sternly when Severus showed no inclination to move. She outstretched one of her slender arms, offering to help him up. "What do you profess you are doing out here in the middle of the night on your own? Explain yourself!"

Severus remained silent. She would not kill him. She would not drag him back. He would remain sitting here until she went away. That was it. He would just not move.

The professor's dark eyebrows pulled into one, straight, stern line.

"Well?"

Severus swallowed, but remained silent.

"Mr Snape," Professor McGonagll said again, sounding increasingly angry, "I am waiting!"

"She would go away soon. If he just kept his mouth and did not move...

"SNAPE!" bellowed the professor, bending forward and locking his arm in a painful grip. With uncommon force, she tried to pull him to his feet, but failed. (Severus had grown considerably heavier than he had been before the start of the new year.) "I am sick and tired of your games! I want to hear a reason why you left the school without permission this time, why you will insist on putting up the most childish manners whenever someone tries to get through to you, and why in the name of Merlin you kept me awake all night, searching for you in the Forbidden – aye, the FORBIDDEN Forest!"

Severus pressed his lips together. Who had asked her to go and look for him? He did not need her help. Once she left, he would continue his way to Hogsmeade, or London, perhaps, if he could get enough food and drink for the way...

"Well, this is it," the deputy headmistress said tiredly, "this is the last straw. If you want to be a sulky teenager, I cannae help you. But I shall not waste my time and strength educating a third-year who is still not mature enough to take responsibility for his actions. You have your father for that, I daresay, and, mark my word, he shall hear of this!"

Severus felt his insides turn to ice, but still he did not move. For a moment, he thought he heard Skein's voice in the darkness, but then realised that it was only his own heartbeat. He closed his eyes, feeling his pulse race insanely. McGonagall would not be able to make him get up and as soon as she was out of sight, he would run for his life. She was an old lady and he was young. She would not keep up.

Realising that her words seemed to have no effect whatsoever on her small student, Professor McGonagall sighed and took out her wand. Severus fixed his gaze upon it. She would not dare. Transfiguration as a punishment had been outlawed several decades ago. He had looked it up when Rodney Robertson had taken up the position as the Potions professor the year before. Not that he trusted Robertson to actually transfigure a human being, but he had checked just in case. His eyes darted from the professor to her wand and back again in stiff, calculating anticipation. McGonagall sighed.

"Please," she said suddenly, lowering her wand. "Is this really what you want, Mr Snape? Me levitating you back home, writing an owl to your father tonight, you getting suspended, possibly expelled?"

Severus blinked. There were several seconds before he had digested the term "levitate". Then, very slowly, he let out a shaky stream of breath, which he realised he had held. He closed his eyes once more and when he opened them again, the professor blurred and stretched to both sides, and suddenly there were tears again. Lots and lots of tears. His entire body shook with a dawning realisation that his plan had, in fact, failed. That he would go back to Hogwarts. That his father would hear of his cowardice. And of the exam. And of McGonagall being angry and having been up all night in search for him.

He cried and cried and only after what seemed an eternity did he realise the pair of arms that was holding him and the chest he was now leaning against, which was warm and comfortable and which made the world a better place.

The two, teacher and student, let go of each other only a considerable amount of time later. Minerva had dried young Snape's face with an oversized tartan handkerchief, stroked his trembling back for a while, and, after some time, just allowed him to curl his fingers into the cleavage of her robes. The boy, barely twelve, despite having almost finished third-year already, seemed so much like her own daughter Morgana that Minerva decided to ignore the recently revised Hogwarts regulations concerning the distance between teachers and students, which was said to "be kept at all times and under any circumstances". Forgotten the rules. Forgotten also Lance's warning, over a year ago, that too many cuddles spoiled a child like Severus, who had never felt the authority of a grown-up, what with his sick mother being overtaxed with the task of educating her son. In this situation, with her arms around the shivering, sobbing boy, Minerva could think of nothing but how to get life better for him again, how to make him feel secure enough to stay within the safety of the Hogwarts castle walls.

"Dinnae be afraid," she whispered in his ear over and over again, slipping naturally back into the dialect of her parents, grandparents, and her various aunts and uncles, all of whom had lived in some corner of the Scottish Highlands or on one of the country's many Isles. When Minerva had been young, real Scots (as opposed to the variety that had flooded the area after the invention of wizarding wireless) had still been quite common, so that all the comforting rhymes and poems that she remembered from her childhood would be of no use to Severus, who had been born and raised in Camden, as far as she knew.

Nevertheless, when his tears would dry only reluctantly, Minerva began to hum the remains of an old tune. She tried to deliver as many details as were left in her emotion-swept brain. The tune was not particularly easy, but much of the finer details had vanished over the years, and parts of the refrain, she suspected, were actually taken from another, very similar song.

Sure enough, however, the humming calmed Severus down.

They sat in silence for a long time after Minerva had finished and eventually, to her great surprise, the boy spoke. In barely more than a whisper, yet undeniably curious, Severus managed after two attempts of getting his voice under any kind of control, "She's dead, you know."

Minerva held her breath. There was a silence and then Severus said again, "She's dead – isn't she?"

"I... I suppose," Minerva said awkwardly, sure that she knew whom the boy was talking about. Only what had suddenly made him think of her, she could only guess. "Severus, I..."

Drat. First names. Always a danger in situations like this. Still, Minerva resolved to let her slip go uncorrected for once.

"She helped Charlie, and then died," Severus said quietly, his head still learning against his Transfiguration teacher. "Mother said she was too good. Too little concerned about her own well-being.

Minerva stared down at the small, pallid face and the pair of glittering, black eyes.

"Who, boy? Who are you talking about?"

"Well, Flora," replied the boy, seeming almost desperate to have her understand his meaning. "Flora McDonald. The girl in the song."

Comprehension began to dawn upon the deputy headmistress.

"Flora will keep... watch... by your weary head," she whispered, remembering a line from the tune at last. "Flora McDonald... I forgot."

"She's my ancestor," Severus said proudly. My mother's great-grandmother or something."

"Really?" said Minerva with a smile, glad that he was not trembling anymore.

"My mother's mother was a McDonald," explained the boy. "But I never met her. I only met one of my grandparents. And I don't think I liked him very much."

"Your grandfather, was it?" Minerva enquired, determined to keep him at high spirits.

"Yes," Severus nodded. "He's the Field Marshal. But he didn't like me either. Father asked him to leave after only an hour -"

He stopped. Minerva understood immediately.

"Listen, Mr Snape," she said quickly, slipping back into a slightly more formal mode, "we shall need to discuss what happened today, but I would like to offer you a chance. If you are reasonable and help me solve this problem, perhaps your father need not know any of this at all..."

A very calculating look met hers. Good. She had his attention.

"I would like to understand what is happening to you, Mr Snape," she thus said. "I would like to help you."

There was a small silence.

"You can't," Severus then replied, his voice thick as leather. "I messed them up again. I'm done for."

"You messed up... what?" Minerva asked, feeling confused.

"The exams," Severus whispered. "History and... and Astronomy... and Transfiguration," he added apologetically. "I don't know what happened. I was just sitting there and then there was Skein and then I couldn't remember a thing."

"Skein?" enquired the deputy headmistress. "Is that your stuffed dragon?"

"No!" Severus prompted sharply, as though it was the most ridiculous thing in the world to assume that Skein was a stuffed anything. "That's Pebble!"

"Oh, excuse my ignorance," Minerva said quickly, feeling her lips pull into a small smile. "Of course. But who is Skein?"

"My friend," Severus said hesitantly. "He was gone for ages, you know. But now he's back and he told me that if I messed up I'd be in serious trouble. He went down to Africa, you see, to talk to father..."

"Mr Snape," Minerva interrupted with a frown, loosening her grip slightly to look straight into the boy's black eyes, "am I right assuming that this 'Skein' is a... a student?"

"I dunno," Severus shrugged, evading her gaze. "He's my friend. It's none of my business what he does when he isn't helping me out."

"And he... helps you out... quite a lot, does he?" Minerva asked, forcing a tremble of frightened anticipation out of her voice. The last thing the boy needed now was an overtaxed teacher at his side.

"He was gone," Severus whispered. "For so long. And I was actually better off without him, I thought. But of course I didn't tell him. It's not polite to tell people you would like them gone. And he's not all bad, of course. It's nice to... have him around every now and then. But he knew anyway. And he didn't like it. Told me I couldn't do without him. And... well... because I had done with him all term, I was suddenly... I suddenly thought I couldn't do the exams now. Not without his help. Not for such a long time. But he vanished before I could ask him."

"He knows... quite a lot, this Skein, does he?" Minerva whispered.

"He knows everything," Severus replied absently. "He's always there. And he's always right..."

"Just like your father," Minerva whispered and promptly bit her lip, realising that she had, perhaps, let on too much of what was going on in her head.

There was a small pause.

"Yes," mumbled Severus after a while, "rather like him. Only that I don't go to the office if I contradict Skein, I suppose..." he let out a hoarse, uneasy laugh that sounded much more like that of an old man than that of a small boy. Minerva felt a shiver run down her spine. The word office, however casually spoken, had always carried a cold, unvoiced meaning in the mouth of Lance Snape the student. For the third time this year she felt as though there might be more to Severus's fear of his father's office than he would let on. A sudden surge of guilt swept over her and she closed her eyes, her grip tightening unduly around Severus's thin body.

"Skein always knows when there is going to be a beating, though," the child whispered. "He warns me. Sometimes only just in time for me to stop breaking the rules. I got around quite a few by doing just what he said..."

"What kind of beatings?" Minerva heard herself ask as though through a thick veil. "How often?"

Severus frowned slightly, looking uncomfortable. "You mean how often does Skein know? I told you, most of the time. Only he isn't always nice enough to tell me before I..."

"Not Skein, for Merlin's sake!" raged Minerva, grabbing the boy's shoulders, tempted to shake him. "How often do you go to the office? How often does your father beat you and with what? A belt? A cane? Is it only when he is angry or does it happen at random moments during dinners? Speak, boy!"

She stopped to take a deep breath, realising that she had started shaking him after all. A pair of wide and horrified, glittering, black eyes followed her every movement.

"I... Ma-maybe three or four times du-during the holidays," Severus stammered. "I... I'm sorry, I... what was the... the question?"

"Does he use a cane?" Minerva hissed.

"O-only once," Severus said feebly. "It's u-usually just beltings, and..."

"Usually?" Minerva persisted. The boy was rather limp in her hands now, although not fighting to get free, nor seeming to mind her pressing his face to her chest every now and then.

"When I don't d-do as he says," he said quickly, his voice trembling. "It's down to me how often, really..."

"Does he beat you only in the office, or at any time, only that office beatings are the worst of all?" Minerva snarled, unable to control herself.

"I... I don't know," panted the boy. "You mean slaps? He doesn't... I... no. No real beatings, except in the office."

"Does the skin tear open?"

"No," Severus whispered, turning very white. "Ne-never..."

"And does he seem to enjoy it?" the deputy headmistress enquired, her breath flattening with every word she spoke. Severus began to cry again.

"No, no! Why do you ask all this? What right... you have nothing to do with us! Nothing at all! Leave me alone! Don't follow me! Let me go and I'll leave! Forever! You needn't have anything to do with me or father ever again!"

Minerva put both arms around the trembling, sobbing child again and closed her eyes, a mixture of fear, pity, and rage raging inside her.

"I am asking all these questions," she said with what little self-control she could muster, "because I wasn't aware that the situation at number thirteen Myrddin Street in Camden was still as bad as it used to be thirty years ago. I am asking all these questions because your father, when he was your age, would have answered every single one of them them with 'yes'. I want all these details because until a moment ago, I trusted your father more than anyone else to make reasonable decisions and to not let his horrible history repeat itself. Apparently, however," she swallowed, her whole body suddenly heavy as though filled with liquid lead, "I was mistaken. Apparently Lance Snape is no better than his own father. And that is exactly what I am going to tell him."

"You are going to talk to him?" Severus said, his head whipping up in alarm. "But you said he need not know..."

"I wasn't aware what this is all about!" Minerva insisted. "I wasn't aware that we have an actual crisis here. Se- Mr Snape, this cannot continue. I shall need to talk to your father and tell him to stop this nonsense immediately."

The boy seemed confused. Again, Minerva did not take long to guess what was puzzling him.

"The way your father treats you is wrong," she said softly. "No, don't interrupt me," she added quickly as Severus was about to protest. "I realise that he has taught you not to contradict him or to even question his decisions. I daresay there is some kind of ridiculous rule telling you that he is never wrong, but we will work on that. I shall not let another Snape grown up in the belief that his father is unfailing, even when..." her eyes narrowed, "even when he is beating his son within an inch of his life on a regular basis."