TWO: The Prodigal

Severus was not about to give up his long walks around the grounds in the evening, welcome parties for new staff members be damned. No one would miss him; he did not exactly add to the festivities. Oh, Horace might like a bit of chatter with him once in a while—for chattering was one of Horace's greatest joys—but Horace was gone, after all, safely retreated into retirement. Severus hoped that his replacement did not throw half as many gatherings.

The white tomb was in sight—there, just past the bend of the shoreline. He always found himself hurrying toward it once it was in view, as though he might catch up at last.

"Shoo," he said to the murder of crows gathered there, and they took off with raucous caws, leaving no blemish on the marble.

He stood at the side of the tomb, but he did not talk to the body within. He was as lacking in superstition as a wizard could be, and Dumbledore could not hear him. This was ritual, nothing more—seven years of pausing at this tomb, and considering what lay ahead.

He admitted, if only to himself, that he felt a sort of grim curiosity about their newest addition. Hogwarts required a Potions Master, and any competent holders of that title were in business for themselves, or employed by St. Mungo's; the Hogwarts salary was fair, but not tempting for a skilled witch or wizard. Unless they were fond of children, he supposed.

A rustle came from nearby; he glanced up to see the Whomping Willow, its branches lively in the twilight. His wand fell into his hand from his sleeve in an instant. Squinting, he made out a small creature darting around the wildly swaying branches. Before long, it bounded just out of reach. The bundle of orange fur was vaguely familiar. Surely he'd seen that particular cat stalking around the castle? Years ago, though—it could not possibly be the same creature—

But with a high-pitched mrow, it made for him, still bounding as though springs were attached to its paws, and twined around his legs.

"Fuck," he muttered, stowing his wand back in his sleeve. The cat purred, squashed face turned up to him, demanding attention, which he resolutely withheld.

It was Granger's. Ill-tempered, intelligent, demanding, it had followed him round the castle for months on end while the girl had finished her N.E.W.T.s. He'd believed at the time that it was keeping an eye on his health—the nerve—but eventually, he had grown…accustomed…to the creature. Reluctantly given it food and scritches, even, which it lapped up. It had obviously not forgotten.

Was the girl here for a visit, then? She was widely known to be friendly with Minerva, but it was odd timing. Term started in just a few days, and they were all quite busy in the week leading up to the first of September.

The beast butted against Severus's leg, the vibration of its purr growing steadily louder, and bounded a few steps away in the direction of the castle. The cat looked over its shoulder and waited, as though it expected him to follow.

He let out an irritated sigh. He'd have to turn up at the party sooner or later, anyway.

"Alright," he growled aloud. "Lead the way."

As though sensing that he wasn't at all inclined to move quickly, the cat stalked forward at a pace more similar to his own. He followed it back toward the castle, his unease mounting.

Granger was many things, but she was not stupid, as much as it pained him to admit it. Nor was she tactless; he couldn't see her imposing herself upon the staff when they were preparing for the start of term. Unfortunately, this left only one explanation for the reason her beast was here, prancing up the steps to the castle. He had no idea where she'd found the qualifications for the post. As far as he knew—and, he admitted, he did not know very far—she had been tirelessly working for the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures since she'd finally left Hogwarts. Devotion to the Ministry of Magic rarely left spare time to become a Potions Master.

The cat turned left, toward the staffroom, once they'd reached the Entrance Hall. Its bottlebrush tail flicked back and forth as it went.

Clinking glasses, polite laughter, and cheery talk tumbled from the cracked door halfway down the hall. The cat nudged it open, checked over its shoulder to be sure Severus still followed, and shouldered in. Severus entered in time to see the cat slink expertly through the jumble of legs and go up on hind paws at its mistress's side, demanding to be let up.

"Crookshanks!" she scolded, shifting her goblet to her left hand and gathering up the beast with her right. "Have you lost interest in the mice already?" Her brown eyes flicked toward the door, the beginning of a puzzled frown curving her lips, stopped by the little o of surprise when she found him standing there.

"I believe that your familiar was fetching me," he said, eyes narrowed.

The laugh and talk had quieted. He felt more than one pair of eyes looking uneasily between him and Granger, as though anticipating a fight.

But a smile twitched up the corner of her mouth, and both Filius and Pomona laughed. "Sorry," she said. "He seems to have taken a liking to you. You ought to be honoured. He's not on friendly terms with just anyone, you know."

He didn't answer her, merely moved out of the doorway at Minerva's warning glance. The chatter resumed. Seeing no point in delaying the inevitable, he moved close enough to Granger and Minerva to hear the news, scooping up a goblet of nettle wine as he went.

The headmistress wasted no time. "Severus, Hermione is our new Potions Mistress," she said crisply, offering her former student a plate of canapés as she spoke. Granger, her hands full of her cat and wine, declined. Crookshanks's yellow eyes were fixed on Severus, who looked back just as unblinkingly.

"So it would seem." He sipped his wine. "Tell me, Miss Granger, have you spent any dedicated time over a cauldron in the last seven years, or did you think your Outstanding N.E.W.T. would suffice?"

Her cheeks pinked, but still, she smiled, ignoring Minerva's little huff of outrage. "I had the opportunity to study with Master Pippin for a time, and I went abroad last year specifically to work with Master Buchvarov. We put out a paper together, actually, it was in the Bulgarian Journal of Potion-Making in January, and there's talk of it being reprinted it Potions Quarterly."

Minerva nodded approvingly, but Severus raised an eyebrow and said nothing at all. Up close, he thought Granger looked a bit ill—a shade too thin, the hint of hollows beneath her eyes.

"Undoubtedly, you'll find that those experiences did not suitably prepare you for first years armed with mistake-ridden concoctions." Minerva huffed again; he half-expected her to scold him. "Nevertheless. I wish you luck."

She laughed as though he'd told a very interesting joke. He'd expected his goading to have a more unpleasant effect on her.

"If you've had your fill of my company," he said, "I'll retire for the night, Headmistress." He nodded once at the older witch, and then turned to leave.

"Severus—"

"Oh, let him go," Granger's voice interrupted as he swept toward the door. "We needn't torture him on my account…Crookshanks!"

But the cat had already bounded out of her arms and followed Severus out the door, tailing him at a distance all the way to his rooms on the first floor. Before the beast had a chance to slip past him, however, he shut the door and raised his wards. The last he heard from the cat was an irritated yowl.

With unnecessary force, he slammed his goblet of wine on his desk—it was already half-empty, but the contents still sloshed over the brim—and left it there. Another few steps put him at the bookcase. He tripped the latch, stepped through the concealed door, and heard a few books clatter to the floor as the passage slammed shut behind him. No matter—none of them were valuable.

He yanked open the glass-fronted cabinet just inside his sitting room, rifling around within for the half-drained bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky that he hadn't touched in some time. He breathed deeply through his nose as he located a glass, poured, and settled himself in the armchair before the banked fire. The amber liquid burned down his throat.

He loathed the idea of sharing the castle with her again, and worst of all, his spite was unwarranted, and he knew it. They'd barely spoken during her final year at Hogwarts, after the war; there was no reason to believe that it would be any different now. He would doubtless see her at mealtimes and staff meetings, but he always did try to seat himself at the end of the table in those instances, where only one person would be forced to take the seat beside him. Thus far, it appeared that she had no intentions of foisting her unwelcome company upon him; she had convinced Minerva to let him leave the party, after all.

It was a reminder, that was all, of how close he'd been to peace before she'd snatched it from his grasp. He dealt with reminders every day. He would learn to live with this one, too.

She didn't look much like how he remembered her, but perhaps that was because he best remembered her as she was when she woke him to face his second life. Grievously thin, clearly malnourished, bearing the scars, grime, and blood of battle, her hair a tangled mess, her eyes dark with hopelessness; he had been unable to erase the image she had presented to him, one that was more reminiscent of death itself than of some angelic saviour. Gone was his vision of her as the Muggle-born brat, an insufferable know-it-all, a Gryffindor. Instead he saw the shadows under her eyes, the age on the face of a teenager who bore her weight as though she'd lived ten, twenty years longer.

He downed the rest of the glass with one gulp and set the decanter back on the small table beside his armchair. He had attended the debriefings he'd been expected to; he'd accepted his Order of Merlin, First Class with good grace; he'd gone to the first Victory Day celebration, a year after the day he should have died, and only endured it by lurking in a corner where no one could accost him for most of the evening.

The excitement had died down after that. People had assumed that just because Severus Snape had been fighting for the good and light all along, he would suddenly become the good man they all thought he was hiding, deep down. People were sorely disappointed by the truth of the matter; spies did not make good heroes.

As if any of them could ever understand, he sneered. As if any of them could comprehend the simplicity of penance—no change to his demeanour required.

He leaned back in his armchair and lifted his wand. "Expecto patronum," he intoned, his voice harsh, focusing with all his strength on the memory of a day—a girl—his best friend—

The doe emerged and picked her way quietly toward him to lay her head on the armrest of his chair, and he looked his fill, the old ache so familiar that it brought forth no new emotions, only old remorse. He almost missed the agony of those early years, when his mistakes and her death had been so fresh, when he'd needed nothing but pain to drive him forward, malevolent, fuelling his singular existence—

Almost, but not quite.

A soft knock sounded, far away on the other side of the bookshelf.

Silently cursing every Gryffindor he'd ever come into contact with—Dumbledore twice, just for good measure—he got to his feet. The doe dissolved into thin air. He passed through his office, clearing up the mess of nettle wine with a wave of his wand, and pulled open the door leading to the corridor just as another louder knock was made.

He had been expecting the Headmistress and a full reprimand for leaving the party early. Unfortunately, however, it appeared that he had underestimated Granger's desire to impose her company upon him. She stood in the doorway, her cat in her arms, her features decidedly neutral, and asked if she might be allowed in for a moment.

Hermione could smell the faint hint of Firewhisky about Snape, but it had not affected his countenance; his eyes were as dark, and as brooding, as ever, his posture just as stiff and unyielding. He looked equally as unhappy to see her as if he hadn't been drinking, which she supposed she ought to be grateful for. At least he didn't fly into a rage at the mere sight of her.

"Might I come in for a moment?" she asked, politely enough, adjusting Crookshanks in her arms.

He looked on the brink of refusing her entry, but then, with merely a muted glare, he stepped aside to allow her to enter.

"Thank you," she said graciously, crossing the threshold and making a beeline for the spindly wooden chair seated just in front of the grand desk. The door snapped shut, and his quiet footsteps followed her. Keeping a firm hold on Crookshanks, who made every attempt to escape and explore, she made herself comfortable, as much as one could make oneself comfortable in such a chair. The walls were lined with bookshelves; she noticed that a few books, from a shelf just behind his desk, were scattered on the floor, but the instant she spotted this, she looked away.

He seated himself behind the desk and surveyed her with a black stare that brooked no room for any pleasantries. It didn't escape her notice that he hadn't yet uttered a single word.

"Well, I suppose you aren't cheery enough to offer me anything stronger than the wine Minerva was serving," Hermione sighed, finally releasing her hold on a squirming Crookshanks, who leapt to the floor and began to prowl the edges of the desk in interest.

His eyebrows inched upward. "I was not under the impression that this would be a lengthy visit," he said without heat.

The mere sound of his voice nearly succeeded in raising goose bumps on her arms; it was silly, really, that after surviving a war and saving his life, she could still fear this man.

"I suppose it won't be, then," she said lightly, and allowed the room to fall into silence once more, merely looking at him, unsure of how to proceed.

He appeared unchanged, if healthier than she'd seen him last—healthier, perhaps, than she'd seen him in all her years at Hogwarts. The permanent shadows under his eyes were lighter, his hair less greasy; she could see that he was no longer so terribly rail-thin, though still quite reedy; just above the collar of his many layers of black wool, she could see the edge of a scar. None of this made any difference. Snape still commanded the air around him with foreboding; despite the minor indications that he was profiting from more sleep and less stress, he still looked the part of the Slytherin bully.

"Would you rather I left?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied promptly. She doubted he'd taken her actual meaning.

"Hogwarts," she amended, and his eyes narrowed. "I didn't know that Minerva hadn't told you I was coming."

"I have endured worse than you."

She waved an impatient hand. "But that's all over now, and I didn't save your life only to cause you discomfort."

He considered her out of those unfathomable black eyes. She held his stare, waiting.

"And what would you do if I said yes?" His voice was soft, dangerous—just the tone he used before deducting about fifty house points, or assigning a month's detention.

"Go back to the Ministry, I expect. It's not as if I'm short on job offers." None of them held quite the same appeal the Hogwarts did, but she'd make do.

"Why come here to begin with?"

"Oh, I missed it," she said offhandedly, smiling. "Mock me all you want, but I loved it here. A weird case at the Ministry got me interested in going a bit further with my Potions studies a few years ago, and then Professor Slughorn retired, and Minerva asked…it seemed like the right idea."

There was a little crease between his brows. "You're lying."

Surely she'd have known if he'd used Legilimency against her—and surely he didn't go around just taking a dip into people's heads, anyway, terribly poor manners, but her smile froze a bit all the same. "Excuse me?"

"It's of no consequence to me." He leaned back in his chair. "I would not be childish enough to ask you to leave." For a moment, he seemed as if he might say something else—thank her for her consideration, maybe—but he did not continue.

She got to her feet, unsettled. "Right, then. Good to have that sorted out. I also come bearing a message."

Again, the eyebrows crept up.

"It's from Harry," she began apologetically.

He made a soft noise of annoyance in his throat. "After eight years of shouting and ignoring the oblivion out of him, he still hasn't got it through his thick head that I want nothing to do with him," he muttered, obviously weary.

"Have you attempted any other tactics?" she asked, carefully keeping a straight face.

He glared, impervious to her humour. "The message," he prompted.

She sighed. "He'd only like it if you stopped sending his Christmas presents back."

"Only."

"And answered a letter or two once in a while," she wheedled.

The scowl he aimed at her was filled with distaste. She made for the door, deciding that that look was answer enough, and that she was just going to have to write to Harry and tell him to give up on his determination to entice Snape into any sort of camaraderie.

Behind her, he said, "If you know of any method that would succeed in persuading him to desist, I hope your conscience would not allow you to leave this office without telling me."

Hand on the doorknob, she chuckled. "Perhaps you've forgotten, but I never did manage to talk Harry out of anything. I'm afraid your guess is as good as mine. Come on, Crookshanks."

Reluctantly, the cat followed her out.