Not-Parents Meeting
“It’s jarring.” Severus admitted, under heavy influence of alcohol, which Minerva always kept a helpful stash of for times like these, when they had to watch their...student come back from a near-death experience, and so they retreated to her small, quaint, but excessively ordered office. “Every so often, she’ll say something completely out of place…Before you came in, she denounced the treatment of the dragons, going so far as to ask if the one that tried to kill her was healed.”
He thought, with some annoyance, and, begrudgingly, a tiny pinch of approval, that Jessica Potter could...maybe...to some...be considered......Admirable, he guessed. Even that assessment was likely the most positive thing he had to say about someone in years, especially considering it was of a girl who fell to near unconsciousness in his class from "teenage pining romance issues". Oh, yes...He witnessed those pathetic desires in her, but purely by accident.
“You see Lily in her," Minerva finished his thoughts with incredible insight, as if she held him hostage with a wand at his temple and tore a memory free. Her keen gaze, though aided with glasses, all but shot an arrow through the center of his forehead. “I do, too. Every so often, like you said. But, she isn’t Lily, Severus.” Her last statement was cut short and dry, a strong insinuation, paired perfectly with a predictive glare.
“Don’t you think I know that?” The much more irate professor snapped. Snape finished his drink, a gin from some country or another, it didn't matter to him in the slightest if it was home-bred. It got the job done. He roughly set the small, hand-blown glass down on Minerva's desk.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed your favoritism," she responded equally unkindly. “You show more concern for her than your other students, and you try to hide it by taking away more points. Am I to guess she got an O on her Potions O.W.L.s without your extra attention? Do you know how hard I have to pester her until she does the same with Transfiguration? I know you must be helping her along. Likely with torture, if I know you at all.”
Severus seethed, hating the fact that he was so transparent to the witch. “I would never do anything inappropriate—”
“—That’s not the worry, Severus," Minerva butted in, per usual, she was the most headstrong woman on the planet.
“Then, what is your concern?” He asked through gritted teeth. His hand curled against his colleague's office chair arm. Cushy, perfect for sinking fingernails into, even though Snape cut them masochistically cut down to the nub at all times.
“That you’re unfocused," Minerva answered coldly, and, again, perceptively, because, even as she had finished her boozy drink as well, Snape's eyes were starting to get particularly blurry (with need for sleep, a rare commodity, he would argue) and his eyelids betrayed it. Her gaze was coldly concentrated, sober, despite the purpose of their troubled rendezvous. For a moment, he thought she could even have been attempting legilimency, but that would have been a fool's errand. And Minerva was no fool.
Snape chose to reflect her, becoming cold, to the point of unresponsiveness. “You’re one to talk.”
“I raised her, Severus. No one would blame me. You, however…I don’t think Albus would see your concern as purely parental, nor healthy.”
Severus bared his teeth in his offense, words carefully enunciated with the greatest of care, “What is not healthy is keeping her in the dark about—”
“—Enough of that!” Minerva snapped, her anger, once simmering, started to bubble like an out-of-control potion. “It was Albus’ decision, and it is final! I do not want to hear about it again from you!”
Severus dropped the subject. Minerva really had no say, regardless, it was Albus who has the real power. Still…it troubled him to see Minerva falling to Albus’ side so quickly. “You should give her more credit. Miss Potter is smarter and stronger than she lets on. If she wasn’t, she would have been dead multiple times over by now.”
Minerva narrowed her eyes at him. “Do not take me for a blind fool, Severus. I know just what she is capable of.”
Yes...Well...The damn teen did confound him before, both literally and figuratively. He was sure Minerva loved to gloat on that fact, even as she condemned him for daring to give a single damn.