Hogwarts' Boardroom
…announcement that the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophe's new Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee will report directly to DMAC's Junior Minister, Cornelius Fudge. Many fear that Fudge, a bumbling and officious wizard of forty-three with little exposure to Muggles, lacks the experience to head a brand-new department which must interface with them closely. Those closer to Fudge express a more generous view.
"After all, he'll have people to actually talk to the Muggles on the streets, " said Mr. Regulus Black, 20, the dashing heir to the Black fortune, in an exclusive interview with this reporter outside Madame Fortescue's Tearoom. "We already know he can keep calm when very clever and excitable people are shouting at him; that's probably the important thing."
Mr. Black gallantly refused to reveal whether the people who often shout at Mr. Fudge include half-blooded Minister for Magic Millicent Bagnold or Mr. Fudge's direct superior at the DMAC. He admitted, however, to losing faith in Bagnold's administration, which he called 'a bit highly-strung,' after Ministry Aurors assaulted him in Diagon Alley not a month ago (for more on the curse that may have been brought down on this great nation by Aurors hunting during Nemoralia, see our August 14th issue).
This scandalous incident, set off merely because Mr. Black had put up his hood in the rain, is referred to merely as 'an honest mistake' by Bagnold's Ministry. But WAS IT REALLY? Sources tell The Prophet that since the August 9th raid on the Portkey Office, DMLE head Bartemius Crouch...
—The Daily Prophet, August 31, 1980
In years to come, wizards whose business it wasn't would be certain that Severus Snape was eternally grateful to Albus Dumbledore for giving an errant Death Eater a second chance at goodness, freedom, and redemption.
What Severus Snape was in fact eternally grateful to Albus Dumbledore for was glancing up from the schedule he was reading out and saying, "Ah, Severus. No trouble at Customs, I hope?"
Which allowed Severus to say, "None to speak of," very dryly, and make Professor Flitwick chuckle and pat an empty chair next to him. This allowed Severus to both avoid prolonged introductions and awkward explanations of his unusual status while he stood framed in the door as an outsider, and instead to sit between the fastest wand in the room and the reassuring hulk of a half-giant who saw no irony in giving monsters names like 'Bertram,' 'Beauty,' and 'Cuddles.' He was thereby enabled to avoid sitting between the half-proud, half-wary, velvet-covered lump that was Slughorn and the two strangers on either side of him.
He could still feel Evan's worried eyes burning into his shoulderblades. For all he knew, Ev was still standing outside the gates, his mind's eye still fretfully fixed on Severus walking away from him. For all he knew, Evan was still standing outside the gates, his mind's eye magically fixed on everything Severus was looking at right now.
Because that was a thing wizards could, he'd learned, give their spouses the ability to do, and Severus was, it turned out, exactly that much of a besotted idiot. Worse, he was such an idiot that thinking Ev might be doing it right now, since he still didn't know how he'd be able to tell, was warming. On the other hand, even the smallest possibility that he might be in such new and intimate contact with Evan while sitting next to someone he didn't even know why to distrust yet made him want to snarl and claw.
"You shall have to tell us all about your trip later, especially if you made it to the zmey's shop," Dumbledore said amiably. As this didn't sound in the least like you promised me a report in person, don't think you're getting out of it by not turning up until the start-of-year staff meeting, Severus was mildly impressed.
"Yes, yes, I got you your snuff box," he replied, putting on a face that said he knew how impolitic it was to be annoyed with his new employer on his first day. As he took a schedule from the middle of the table, he added, in the same why-does-the-new-kid-have-to-play-owl voice, "And your according-to-him-very-dear friend says hello and he hopes you'll write soon. Did you ever even buy anything there, or was he just name-dropping?"
Because he could insert double meanings out of context without prior agreement, too. Put that in your beard and braid it, old man.
And it did, in fact, he noted smugly, win him a restrained double-take, and Flitwick's eyebrows went up. All Dumbledore said was, "Gracious, what a memory he has. It has been a long time."
"But since we don't have an especially long time before classes begin," the Tartan interjected, meaningfully folding her arms. "And a more than usual number of us need orienting. And since they have now all condescended to join us…"
"Professor," Severus said, inclining his head respectfully, "if you know the trick of getting the obligatory souvenirs through Customs without a delay that International Relations appears to calculate by picking a number of hours out of a hat, especially when those souvenirs include fanciful-looking enamel boxes of grey powder reeking of lavender and Victorian dissipation, I should be glad to learn it."
She looked at him in suspicious surprise. Severus couldn't imagine why; he'd been perfectly polite. International Relations being staffed with stuffed shirts, arses, and mules was a well-known fact he could not possibly be blamed for. He didn't know why the hell Slughorn was suddenly coughing into the lacy cuffs of his sleeve and Professor Babbling was choking on her biscuit, either.
Or why the little brown bug-eyed, frizzy-haired shadow on the other side of Slughorn was staring at him through glasses the size of Holmesian magnifying glasses. Or why she seemed familiar, for that matter. She wasn't. He would have remembered those glasses, and most likely even that hair.
"So should we all, I'm sure," Dumbledore said soothingly. "Alas, it must remain a mystery, for Professor McGonagall is quite right; we must make the most of these remaining quiet hours."
Half the professors gave sighs that were half bitter, half fond, and all reluctance for their jobs to start. Then they gave Severus skeptically raised eyebrows for joining them in sighing.
"What?" he demanded. "You cannot possibly think me unfamiliar with the chaos of a school full of adolescents hopped up on competitive tribalism and testosterone—I have a whole bag of throat lozenges. If anyone needs one, you have only to say the word."
"Do try the tea, Severus," Flitwick suggested in what Severus considered to be a rather strangled voice.
"I don't suppose anyone would care to explain," hopelessly hoped the man on the other side of Slughorn from the frizzy sparrow. Severus assumed he was Gawain Robards, who'd beat him out for DADA professor at the beginning of the summer.
Having read some of Robards' articles, Severus considered that this was entirely fair, even if he also considered that no one from a normal wizarding family was likely to have the granular grasp of Defense that he did. Not in Britain, or at least, he'd never met anyone at Hogwarts who showed any signs of growing up in a rough neighborhood. And the pureblood families that used hexes as punishments didn't allow their children to dodge.
Flitwick reached up to pat Severus's arm, and now there were going to be introductions, ugh. "Professor Gawain Robards, Professor Sybill Trelawney, this is Master Severus Snape, who'll be assisting our own Potions Master this year while working towards his international accreditation. As you can see, Gawain, Severus is a quite recent graduate, and we all remember him."
"I for one remember him being better-mannered," the Tartan muttered to Dumbledore, who twinkled at her and didn't reply.
Severus opened his mouth to explain that as he'd been in her class at that time the situation had called for a complete subsumation of his personality out of respect for her position and the desire to avoid more detentions than her students kept punting him into.
Perhaps fortunately, Sluggy got in first. "I thought of nominating young Severus for Head Boy, you know," he said comfortably. When everybody's eyebrows turned to him, he added, "For, oh, fifteen seconds or so. One doesn't like to have one's students murdered in their beds, after all."
"That was most thoughtful of you, sir," Severus told him, meaning both the original semi-homicidal and quasi-complimentary fleeting notion and the preservation of his life from blood-purists like Mulciber, genuinely touched.
Moderately touched. Slughorn knew he hadn't ever been alone in his bed by then and was therefore somewhat buffered from murder attempts, surely? He couldn't be that out of touch. Severus had been sure he was just criminally laissez-faire, not ignorant.
...Oh. Taking that into account, it was possible Sluggy had been more concerned about the health of firsties who might annoy Severus by asking him for help. Which was just insulting. Or maybe he'd been worried Severus would decide that most of Reggie's classmates were too dangerous to live? Less insulting, but still, Severus hoped Slughorn knew he had more sense of self-preservation than that.
"It would have been nice to have a Head Girl and Boy who took the work of looking after all the younger students seriously, after all," Slughorn explained why he hadn't fought harder for Narcissa Black, let alone Evan Who-Me-Work Rosier (which latter needed no explanation; Severus wasn't blind about Ev, he hoped). Not that Severus grudged Lily her badge, or that Narcissa would have had much use for a distinction that got in the way of her spiderwebs and social life. "They so rarely do."
Severus bit back a stinging remark about how unfair it was for students to expect teachers to do most of the work of looking after children. In his current position, it would be certain to come back and bite him venomously.
"Was he expected to murder students in their beds?" the frizzy sparrow whispered anxiously to the Tartan. McGonagall, for all her annoyance with Severus, shot her an immensely heartening incredulous look.
"Only by the very silliest," Severus told her smoothly and truthfully, with what he hoped was an engaging and comforting smile.
She edged away.
It would have been an engaging and comforting smile on Evan's face. Even on Luke Malfoy's. Severus was sure it would, and retreated to his teacup to sulk.
Dumbledore, damn his eyes, twinkled harder. "Severus, you're aware of Professor Robard's work, I believe?"
"I've enjoyed what I've read of it," Severus agreed, "and I'm intensely curious to learn whether your collection of secrecy sensors explodes once the students arrive."
Everyone seemed to be looking at him. He blinked at them. "Perhaps you think some of the Hufflepuffs, at least, aren't sneaking, conniving little bastards?" he inquired. "I don't mean fundamentally," he hastened to assure Professor Sprout's expression of gathering thunder, "but there's not a one of them that isn't snogging before they're supposed to be holding hands, or rehearsing explanations for inevitable homework lateness, or buying sweets on the train and rainbow glitter ink in Hogsmeade when they were given a perfectly good packed lunch and sound black inkpots, or making friends with someone with the wrong politics or blood status to please their parents, or planning the wrong career."
"What's wrong with having a little harmless fun at school?" Professor Sprout asked, still looking a bit wounded.
"I didn't mean there's anything wrong with that sort of sneaking about," Severus explained, "but secrets are secrets, and most instruments don't know how to make distinctions. There are, what, five hundred students arriving? And I noticed Peeves didn't bother me when I came in, but I expect he'll be about and in full force on Monday."
"I expect he'll be manifesting in half an hour or so," Kettleburn observed drolly.
"Now, now, lad's got a point," Hagrid kindly patted Severus into the table, nearly breaking the teacup with Severus's chin and also nearly breaking Severus's ribs. He'd forgotten what a Hagrid back-pat was like, and possibly Hagrid had forgotten what skinny people were like. Or perhaps he'd only 'forgotten,' like Rus Lestrange did when he was annoyed or being pointed.
"All I meant," Severus pushed out, coughing, "was that a combined concentration of sensors and—"
"I left most of them home," Robards said mildly. "I had the same concern."
"Not all, though, Professor Robards?" asked Sprout, evidently still smarting about the perceived smear to her Hufflepuffs. "You'll need them for lessons, won't you?"
"Not to mention to guard his office," Severus said as a show of good faith since he knew that had really been meant for him.
Sluggy's hand opened and closed once, quietly. His face was amused, though, not warning or overly kind, so Severus took it as a quit while you're ahead, not a that's enough damage from you. Subsiding in relief, he chanced a sip of tea now that he thought he could swallow without decorating Professor Babbling's face across the table.
Robarts smiled at him, and offered, "I do have one or two that are a little more discriminating; I can show you sometime if you like."
Severus beamed back, although probably no one here was going to recognize the expression for what it was. Probably this evidence of sanity meant Robards was going to die horribly rather than be fired in disgrace, but it also meant that in the meantime Severus just might have someone sensible to talk to. Maybe. One data point was one data point.
"On the matter of offices," Dumbledore turned the discussion, "our Keeper of the Keys will show you to yours after the meeting, Master Snape, and I'll meet with you and Professor Slughorn to discuss your duties tomorrow after breakfast, and the findings from your trip. I trust that by then you'll have acquainted yourself with the Potions syllabus and schedule?"
"If I may have a copy of it, yes," Severus said cautiously, in case this was hazing and they meant him to struggle along without one.
"Naturally, m'boy," Slughorn said, passing a thick, tightly-rolled scroll over. Severus did hear just a trace of warning in it, now. He thought it meant he was insulting someone, but wasn't sure how.
"Excellent, excellent," said Dumbledore lightly. Severus couldn't tell whether he was ignoring their undercurrents or hadn't noticed. "Now, as Professor McGonagall has noted, we do have one or two new professors in unusual need of orientation. Professor Robards has been away from Hogwarts for long enough that the customary tour is in order, to remind him of, for instance, its touchier stairways, and Professor Trelawney has never passed through our fair halls at all. Would anyone like to volunteer?"
Severus became aware that most of the faculty was giving him a collective you-are-now-the-junior-member look. He frowned, and looked at Slughorn. "I don't mind, if that's what you want. Only I thought you'd want me to spend tomorrow going through the student files and ingredients cupboards and checking the equipment."
"Oh, no need to worry about the equipment, m'boy," Slughorn assured him, sending Severus's heart rate through the roof, which was quite high in places at Hogwarts. The last time he'd seen some of those cauldrons, they'd been beyond due for recasting, and some had even shown traces of rust, and that had been two years ago! "But, er, yes, I think you'll be quite occupied." His eyes were a strange mix of strain and satisfaction, and Severus was suddenly panicked with the certainty he was about to be sent through a thousand unknown Slytherin dormitory crawlspaces cleaning out all the dark magic toys that careless pureblooded students had squirrelled away for the last thousand years.
The prospect was still less terrifying than rusty, worn-thin cauldrons. He tried desperately to catch the Tartan's eye, since she was Deputy Headmistress and had the most parchment in front of her and could be assumed the manager of the budget. And it was just possible she could redistribute the metal herself, if he could fix the rust.
In fact he did catch her eye, but she seemed to think it a request to refill his teacup, which she did very civilly. "It appears to be up to you again, then, Hagrid," she said, and refilled Hagrid's, too.
"Bless you, I don't mind," Hagrid smiled encouragingly at the sparrow.
"If that's settled," said Professor Timaeus, "I move we discuss the proposed alterations to this year's—"
"Motion denied," said the Tartan flatly.
"Oh, really, Minerva!" Timaeus exclaimed. "Look, I mean no disrespect to Professor Trelawney, but Imago never needed half this stuff, and Peeves drop-kicked a telescope and two crates of crystal lenses off the Astronomy tower last April. Reparo does very little good after a nine-story drop! Not to mention astral drift…"
Severus gathered from the resulting twenty-minute clamor that there was no hope for the cauldrons. He spent most of it re-acquainting himself with Slughorn's insipid syllabus, crying silently inside with despair over the class distribution. He'd so hoped his year was an anomaly, or that, at worst, the distributions alternated. No: apparently everyone just wanted there to be fights between the most volatile student groups in the most dangerous classroom every year.
"It's the hallmark of a good compromise that everyone should go away unhappy," Dumbledore finally put a stop to the twelve-way catfight, which included Madam Pomfrey and Madam Hooch, but not Professor Babbling or the napping Professor Binns.
Not really paying attention, since he was too busy internally screaming at Slughorn about the fact that there were still no surprise exams scheduled, Severus asked, without lifting his nose from the syllabus, "Isn't that also the defining characteristic of the last act in a tragedy?"
The rebellious silence turned into the more familiar staring-at-Severus one, and he blinked up from his scroll. "Or are we replacing the cauldrons?" he asked hopefully. "Because that might go some way towards averting one."
"And flights of angels," muttered Flitwick into his palm, only just audible, "sing thee to thy rest."
Even if it was Flitwick, Severus was feeling rather frayed at this point, and narrowed his eyes. Equally quietly, he muttered back, "If that was a crack about me mam—wait," he added in a slightly less sotto voce, even more hopefully than before, "can they? Are we done?"
"Who said anything about cauldrons?" asked the witch Severus assumed must be the new-ish Muggle Studies teacher, sounding bewildered.
"Didn't you?" he asked Slughorn, probably sounding more accusatory than he meant to in public.
"Now, Severus," Slughorn began, sounding so guilty that Severus knew his whole damn maintenance budget was going to the Slug Club.
"No, Master Snape," Dumbledore cut across everyone, so loudly and placidly that Severus would have cut right through every one of them to get into Evan's lap. Ev would have done the same thing in a similar tone, but without raising his voice. Or maybe just by setting his teacup down quietly. "I'm afraid we can't send you off just yet," the headmaster smiled hatefully. Or, at least, Severus hated that he was implying that they were nowhere near done in such a cheerful tone. "Next item, Professor McGonagall?"
"Unless anyone wants to discuss Quidditch—"
There was a series of groans.
The Tartan started to briskly and good-naturedly accede to these groans, but the sparrow timidly asked what the matter was at the same time that a rather blank Severus asked, "Why doesn't everyone want to talk about Quidditch?"
While Slughorn gave Trelawney a few brief, fatherly words on Why We Do Not Get Certain People Started On Quidditch, Professor Babbling had concluded she had another fanatic on her hands. A bit exasperated, she told Severus, "I realize you used to play for your House, Snape, but there'll be plenty of time to talk sports during term, and the Heads can sort out the pitch bookings between themselves privately."
Rather pleased she'd remembered he'd played sometimes, despite her tone, he replied, "I don't want to talk about sports, Professor, I want to talk about off-pitch injuries."
"What do you mean?" the Tartan asked keenly, looking as if she wasn't sure whether to be interested or suspicious.
"Not now, Severus," Slughorn blared. Severus whipped around and stared at him. "Not now," he repeated, less urgently but still quite emphatic. Severus shot him a narrow-eyed you'd better believe it'll be later, then look, and he wiggled his plump fingers shallowly on the table in acknowledgement.
"Then, if no one is going to talk Quidditch," the Tartan tried again, a bit dryly, to a few chuckles that Severus would decide later whether to resent, "the next item is hallway patrol."
"I think Professor Trelawney and Master Snape ought to be excused for the first term," Flitwick said thoughtfully. "It's one thing for a new DADA teacher, but I think we ought to let the students get accustomed to seeing these two in a classroom role first."
Severus frowned. "I can't object to any extra time for research, of course, but I don't ask to shirk any usual duties." The fewer teacher-like things students saw him doing, the longer it would take him to establish himself and the more trouble they'd give him.
"That's good of you, Sn—Master Snape," Madam Pomfrey said drolly, "but I don't fancy sorting out any knock-down drag-out hex battles between seventh-year Gryffindors and a member of staff who makes up his own, if it's all the same to you."
"Well, I wasn't going to say that," Flitwick agreed, as Severus flushed. "But really, Severus, I think it's best they get used to seeing you in the classroom before they get used to seeing you walking about in the dark on your own. We don't want students hurt, you know."
"I wouldn't—"
"Or glued to the ceiling."
Severus huffed, and retreated sulkily behind his teacup. Now the sparrow was trying to apparate to the other side of Slughorn; he could tell.
"Now," Dumbledore said, "for the benefit of our new faculty: at ordinary occasions you may all sit where you like, so long as it's at the High Table where we can all keep an eye out for incipient food fights—"
"Oh, surely," the sparrow protested, horrified.
"Ha," chorused McGonagall, Timaeus, Babbling, Kettleburn, and Severus, whereas Hooch, Flitwick, and Hagrid actually laughed, Digitalin, Robards, Pomfrey, and the Muggle Studies teacher each made a face, and Sprout sighed.
Dumbledore smiled serenely. "For high spirits, let us say rather. At more formal meals, such as the Start of Term Feast, however, I should like you to be seated before the table of your own House. It will heighten their feelings of unity and solidarity on these occasions and, most importantly, reduce the appearance of chaos amongst their guardians."
One or two dutiful chuckles. Severus did not, of course, join in. He wouldn't have anyway, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it. For one thing, he thought it largely had served, in his time, to point out how few Slytherins there were on staff.
Not but what three out of twelve wasn't, when he looked at them all together, in fact the correct number. But in this case, the numbers lied. Everyone knew Kettleburn didn't count and Babbling wouldn't be bothered with House matters. They might as well have been Ravenclaws.
"The Heads of House are excepted from this scheme," Dumbledore went on, "as they will sit in the center of the table with me. Yes, Professor Trelawney?"
"Excuse me, but that doesn't tell me where to sit," she reminded him, not exactly timidly but with a mustering-her-courage look.
"Which brings us to my very favourite part of the evening!" Dumbledore cried delightedly.
Severus hoped it was also the last part. He was thoroughly done with people for the night, between this meeting and dealing with Customs all day. Besides, he wanted to get a start on the student files in case Slughorn kept him busy all day tomorrow with something dreadful.
Except that all he really wanted was to tangle up with a space alien and let ancient words drift through the warmth they made together, speaking not to them directly, but to a universe of future humanity that generously and anonymously encompassed their half-listening quiet. Surely he wasn't the only one who wanted to leave for reasons beyond impatience to be getting on with it? He'd never joined in any of the half-hearted gossip about his professors' social lives. Not that there'd ever been very much; his set had been much more concerned with their own marital prospects and he himself had been profoundly uninterested in the entire topic of conversation, except when it was making him want to kill Potter and whoever was underestimating Narcissa or wasting Evan's time at any given moment.
Now, though, he wondered how many of them really slept in the castle, as they were all said to do. Dumbledore had entertained himself for a while at Severus's expense by absolutely forbidding even the most discreet of roommates before explaining that vanishing cabinets in the rooms of married professors were standard practice. It had seemed a bit of a security risk at the time, but Linkin's extensive list of complaints about the trouble of setting up the arrangement had put his mind somewhat at rest. So he wasn't excessively worried, though it was something to keep in mind if things got worse. And he wasn't exactly curious; he didn't feel any urgent need to pry into anyone's life in particular. But he did wonder.
Granted, this place was probably nothing more than normalcy for most of them, by now: a tedium and occasional irritant at worst, home and respite at best. He doubted any of them were quite as comforted as he was by knowing there was always, as it were, a welcoming lamp-post on the other side of the wardrobe, however eternal the winter. But Hogsmeade wasn't much of a wide world to ramble through. It was a great richness compared to Spinner's Row, no question. After two years in London, though, living off Diagon Alley and visiting the Sherwood any time he felt like apparating by after work, it felt very, very small.
But then, 'small' in the wizarding world could still be filled with unexpected things, as Dumbledore reminded Severus by pulling the Sorting Hat out of his voluminous ash-and-turquoise sleeve and setting it on the table. Smiling at the sparrow's very Petty-Evans-ish what-the-hell-is-that-dirty-thing expression, he said, "This, Professor Trelawney, is the venerated artifact who determines where everyone in the castle, will, as you so straightforwardly put it, sit—yes, Master Snape?"
Because Severus, who had seen where this was going, had raised two diffident fingers. At least, he was trying to be diffident, since he was a) the junior here and b) not currently overwhelmed with tsunamis of infuriated frustration. "Mightn't it be a good thing, Professor, to have one neutral party in the castle?"
"There's Filch," pointed out Hooch.
"Filch regularly threatens students with whipping and disembowelment," Severus reminded her. "He's no one's idea of a safe haven. Professor Trelawney," he nodded civilly at the sparrow, "looks far more approachable. She's never built up House alliances, so there's no reason to lumber her with House rivalries, is there?"
He seriously doubted, in fact, that she could survive thirty seconds in that role. But she didn't have the plasticity of an eleven-year-old, or any form-mates to live in her room and draw close around her as House politics marked her and scarred her and painted a two-coloured target on her face, either. Severus didn't consider himself full of benevolence towards mankind as a general matter, but shoving someone who couldn't swim into a lake full of sharks when there was already blood in the water was just not on.
"I hope students in need of a safe haven always feel they can come to their Headmaster, Severus," Dumbledore said gravely, meeting Severus's eyes over his half-moon spectacles.
"No doubt, sir," Severus replied neutrally, and felt he deserved a medal for it. If asked, Evan would probably make him a glass one. What would it look like? Evan had several books on symbols for his work... there were animals known for their silence... he could at least be sure it would be green, but maybe with yellow accents because silence is allegedly golden.
Dumbledore sighed. "Well, Professors, Master Snape's point is not without merit. What say you?"
"I say that there's no reason to tell the students where the Hat puts Professor Trelawney," the Tartan said pragmatically. "It's not as if we ever do remind them where a new teacher was sorted as a student, except when someone takes on a House as its Head. Sorting her will tell her where to sit at the feasts and whom to assist during emergencies; it needn't go beyond that. It's not as if we all go about wearing our colors."
"True, true," Dumbledore agreed. "And it is traditional, whether a new teacher was taught at another wizarding school or by tutors."
He gave Severus an are you going to make trouble over this look. Severus shrugged agreeably. It wasn't really his problem, after all. His problem was that everyone already knew not only what but who he was. Everyone was going to think the new witch was a Hufflepuff anyway, with how twitchy she was, since no one knew her, even if most actual Hufflepuffs weren't like that at all. In his experience, the twitchiest ones were the Gryffindors who'd fought to wear red to prove to themselves they could overcome all their baked-in fear, but hadn't found the trick of it yet.
And certain Slytherins who were intelligent enough to grasp how much trouble they were in, he wryly acknowledged to himself.
"However," Dumbledore went on cheerfully, "we can't Sort anyone until they've heard the Sorting Song and know what it's all about. That would be most unfair, since the Hat does take personal inclination into account. Which returns us to the best part. Hagrid, would you like to explain to our new staff members?"
Next to Severus, the big man puffed himself even bigger. "Be proud to, Professor," he said.
Severus couldn't help but smile a little. While he himself had no intention of foregoing the advantages of the voice he'd worked bloody hard to hone, it was good to hear someone talking, as Da would have said, like a real person.
He had opinions about modern people living in patron-client relationships—had spent most of his school years trying to avoid them, with only middling success but more than he'd placed practical hopes on—and that little interaction had been pure patronage, in so very many ways. But if Hagrid was happy, it wasn't anyone else's business.
Hagrid couldn't really be called a modern person anyway. He certainly wouldn't do well in a modern setting. Those tended to be scaled for five-to-six foot tall people, and involve more steel, which was to say wrought iron—cold iron, at any temperature—than might be entirely healthy for a half-giant.
"Now, this here hat, miss," Hagrid said, oblivious to Severus wondering if he could even ride the Knight Bus, let alone a muggle taxi, "is a thousand years old."
Trelawney stared at it, half fascinated and half dubious. "But how—"
"Magic," the Tartan told her crisply, and didn't say obviously out loud.
Severus understood this to mean Hagrid just said it was a thousand years old, how the hell are we supposed to know how it works? The sparrow had shrunk back into her chair, but he himself breathed easier.
He'd gotten the sharp end of her tongue often enough to be wary of it himself, and the frizzled witch clearly didn't know how to take it, true. Still, Severus had to admit it was a relief to be somewhere where they talked both in straight lines and in English. You couldn't get both at once in either London or Bulgaria, and he wasn't old enough to retire into an apothecary in the Sherwood yet.
"It's a part of the castle," Flitwick explained more patiently, possibly because he was as quick to talk about enchanted objects as McGonagall was to talk about the Pride of Portree team. "Part of the castle's magic. It had a more mitred shape around the top, back when I was a student. We think it may have been a helmet one of the Founders used in the Anarchy, although records from around the founding of Hogwarts are on the murky side."
Severus, whose ancestors had done rather well out of the Anarchy, glared at the slumbering and translucent Binns for not having been the one to say that. Ever. To anyone.
"And what we do with it, see," said Hagrid, "is, the students put it on, and it has a look into their heads and tells us all what House they'll do best in. But first it sings that song Professor Dumbledore was talking about. As an introduction and all. And it gets that," he finished proudly, "from us."
"Very clearly put, Hagrid," Dumbledore said kindly.
Severus disagreed. At the end of those four sentences, he had about fourteen more questions, and he'd sat through seven Sorting ceremonies.
Dumbledore wasn't relying on Hagrid's 'clarity,' though. "While the Hat is an artefact rather than a person, Professor Trelawney, it has enough personhood to get bored. It doesn't like to give the same song year after year. And, indeed, language and culture change so that we wouldn't understand the songs it sang when it was new!"
Quietly, to Flitwick, Severus muttered, "Many men seyn that in swevininges ther nis but fables and lesinges…"
"The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote," Flitwick diverged, grinning.
Which Severus thought was something of a cop-out: everyone knew that one and it had nothing to do with the passage Severus had slid him. But at least it proved he'd recognized Severus's author, even if he hadn't quite capped the quotation off the top of his head without warning. And that there were at least two of them at the table who would understand a twelfth-century song quite—well, reasonably adequately, anyway, thank you. At least three, in fact, since Professor Babbling's proficiency with Middle English could be tentatively assumed even if it did use the modern latinate alphabet.
"Professor Flitwick, Master Snape, did you have something to add?" Dumbledore asked courteously.
"We were just agreeing that linguistic drift would indeed complicate communications from an unlearning and static artifact, Professor," Severus replied innocently. Because he was innocent, and hadn't actually said anything terrible. Even if Avery would have been sure that 'sweveninges' had to be a far dirtier word than 'dreamings.' Which only went to prove the point again. Although you couldn't prove much by Avery,
"Just so," Dumbledore agreed, giving them tolerant that's enough, boys eyes. Slughorn's eyes, by contrast, were well plastered over by his fleshy palm, for some reason.
"He couldn't have had that rehearsed," Timaeus hissed to Slughorn suspiciously from across the table. Without moving his hand, Slughorn shook his head glumly. "It sounded rehearsed," Timaeus insisted, giving Severus squinty eyes, which were all the worse for being buried in several metric tons of crows feet.
Severus stared at them both in confused suspicion. You didn't have to rehearse a quote. You already knew it, and so did the other fellow. That was the point of a quote.
Then he remembered he was supposed to be a Slytherin, and thought he'd better stop looking Obviously Out Of The Loop before Narcissa's ire could apparate in from Wiltshire and kick him in the face.
Speaking to the sparrow again, Dumbledore continued, "Aside from the question of, as Master Snape so eloquently puts it, linguistic drift, the practice of having new professors put the Hat on keeps it up to date on current events."
"More or less," Flitwick piped up dryly.
"The grand sweep of events," Dumbledore amended, smiling. "While the Hat has no second sight and cannot see the future," he bowed a little to the sparrow with that old-fashioned courtesy which, Severus had concluded, meant precisely nothing, "its long experience has, in the past, allowed it to place the news of the day—"
"Year."
"Yes, indeed. To place the news of the year, as our good Head of Ravenclaw points out," Dumbledore sailed on serenely, affecting not to notice Slughorn smirking at an unbothered Flitwick for being called a pedant, "into the context of the echoing patterns of history. It has, over the centuries, issued several very timely warnings due to this practice."
Severus bit his lip on a comment about correlation and causation. When there was only one artifact of its type in the world, doing a controlled experiment to find out what had really enabled those warnings would, admittedly, be difficult. Still, he detested the way wizards had of making up a fable and taking it for fact.
Severus glanced around the room to see if anyone else was making a face that might indicate they'd noticed the enormous assumption that enabled the Headmaster to publically justify what might well be an otherwise pointless tradition that gave him, the Hat's master, telepathic information about new hires. Then he nearly fell out of his chair.
Everyone seemed to have swallowed the pronouncement without interest—except the sparrow. When his gaze darted over her face, passed over her eyes, it was like someone shouting in his face: overwhelming relief, a faint sense of smugness, the sense of being in a small room full of soft, dark, warmth and incense, and the very dismissively felt phrase cold read.
"All right, Snape?" Hagrid asked.
His mind kicked up a notch. Why might he be distressed—curiosity wasn't quite enough to cover it if he'd really flinched, and even if he hadn't meant to glance over her mind, it wasn't likely to be taken well… not that he'd taken it well, considering he hadn't expected it at all…
"If there are three of us, do we all have to put it on?" he asked Dumbledore warily. "If it has both memory and personhood, er, our first encounter wasn't… ah, it didn't go entirely smoothly…" He let himself wince a little, and wondered if he was flushed. He felt as if he might be.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Robards asked, looking between him and the Hat curiously.
Severus retreated a little in his chair, his shoulders inching closer to his ears.
"At his Sorting," the Tartan said dryly, "Master Snape came within a hair's breadth of setting Godric Gryffindor's own personal hat on fire."
There being nothing he could reply to this that wasn't a heartfelt insult to her own personal House and almost everyone in it, Severus just turtled back further into his hair.
After a moment, Robards said, carefully, "Did you mean that quite literally, Professor? There are hat-stalls in every year, of course, but—"
"There was smoke," the Tartan said flatly.
"We all saw it," Digitalin agreed. Sadistically, in Severus's opinion. It wasn't as if Digitalin could have had any proof that Severus was the one who'd etched an array to make a peep-hole into the Hufflepuff quidditch showers. She couldn't have had, since it had been Mulciber. Disliking him for perverting her teachings when she had no evidence against him, other than Black's histrionics, was ridiculous.
There was nothing left to do but straighten out his back and lift his chin. "I was entirely satisfied," he declared with as much dignity as he could scrape together, "by the conclusion it came to in the end."
"Meaning you won," Flitwick teased.
Severus shrugged, refusing to embarrass old Walrusface, who was only civil to the head of the House Severus had wanted. "I didn't lose."
"Well, if the Hat bursts into flames, we shall forego the experiment," declared Dumbledore cheerfully. "And, in the light of this concern, I think we will also save you, Master Snape, for last. That way the Hat will have the memory of this conversation, and will be able to speak or act on its own behalf if it wishes to."
Severus did not like the sound of that at all. He reached into a waistcoat pocket and drew out a phial. With a tap of his wand, he turned the cap into a pump and nozzle, and sprayed his face and hair.
"What was that?" Hagrid asked, sniffing the place on his sleeve where some of the mist had got him.
As flatly as McGonagall, Severus said, "Flame retardant."
There was a short pause, and then Robards asked Dumbledore, "This is the one that wanted my job, isn't he," at the same time that Babbling incredulously asked Severus, "Why on earth are you carrying around a bottle of flame retardant?"
Rushing to answer before Dumbledore could, Severus said, in a this-should-be-obvious tone, "A cauldron might explode." He immediately wished he'd said something about Dumbledore's pet fire hazard instead, but it was too late.
"…At a staff meeting."
"You never know. I didn't know putting on the Hat was on the agenda. Someone might have wanted a stimulant brewed. Or a post-meeting… aperitif."
"Which you'd expect to explode," Babbling pursued.
Severus lifted his chin. "There are any number of reasons a cauldron might unexpectedly explode," he replied, as smoothly as he could. Then he Very Carefully Did Not Look At Slughorn. "Reasons increase with the cauldron's age and decrease with good maintenance."
Slughorn sighed.
"What a good thing no one has brought any," Dumbledore steamrollered over the discussion. As far as Severus could tell, his pleasure in them all seemed genuine, which was positively headache-inducing. Then Dumbledore paused, and asked Severus cautiously, "Have they?"
Severus turned an insulted look on him in lieu of any verbal reply. He thought that yes, of course, three was probably not the answer that Dumbledore was hoping to evoke at this point in the conversation.
At least his nonanswer seemed to have shared out his headache, which was cheering. Looking just the tiniest bit strained (ha), Dumbledore said to Robards and Trelawney, "Well then! Without further ado, which of you would like to venture first into a more equitable exchange with history?"
The sparrow, predictably, shrank back anxiously in her chair.
"I don't mind," Robards shrugged. "Put it on myself, then, this time, shall I?"
"By all means," Dumbledore agreed courteously, and handed it to him.
Although it should have been old hat to see the wrinkles on the tapering, sagging crown deepen and solidify into a curmudgeonly, tortoise-like face as soon as it touched the top of a head, Severus had never seen it happen up close. From far away it was funny, but from far away you couldn't feel the air tighten, didn't get that sense of shifting coins echoing around damp stone walls as a buried dragon stirred awake. There was something stirring and uneasy and deep about the change, when it was so near to him, like all the best dark magic.
Then there was the thing that so often happened under the Hat: Robards' face looked as if its owner was having an animated conversation, but his mouth didn't move except for the time or two when he laughed. Children did sometimes mouth words while they were talking with the Hat, usually while trying hard to get their preferences across. It was always a silent conversation, though, and mostly a private one.
Unlike children at the Sorting Ceremony, he did indeed look as if he was having 'an equitable exchange with history;' he had the look of someone chatting with an old and well-liked acquaintance. Severus did find this all mildly interesting, and he was looking forward (with a determined refusal to think about worst-case scenarios) to examining the experience from the inside with a more adult perspective than he'd had at eleven.
Then, though, Robards did something the eleven-year-olds decidedly did not do, ever. His eyes glazed over—at this point, Severus noticed that Flitwick had a quill hovering over a heavy black tome he'd pulled out of nowhere Severus had noticed—and he started, in an echoing, rolling voice, to speak. Or, more precisely, Severus decided, to declaim.
"In ancient times of civil war
When faith and magic reeled
Four friends fought hard, and, back to back,
Made free one bloody field.
"They built a town and school here,
But then wondered how to fill them:
Let hate and chaos reign again?
That prospect truly chilled them!
"Cried Helga, "All with magic, come!
For if our gates are wide,
They'll always know who their friends are:
I'll let them all inside."
"The ones he thought were bravest,
Godric meant their strength to hone:
"In times like these we need bold wands
To tend and shield our own."
"Rowena smiled, "Can you sit still?
Love learning? Come with me.
Such things we'll make were never seen
At church or university."
"But brooded canny Salazar,
"The children of the muggles
Bring swords and flame: they've ever been
Our foes, and, too, each others'!
Ere we dare to try to teach them,
All must call each other brothers."
"And so they four spelled up this school,
Each House new family.
To learn which one is now yours,
Nothing simpler! Just ask me."
It had been unsettling to watch, but it was so very clearly a Sorting Song, so very much like every other Sorting Song Severus had ever heard, that by the third or fourth stanza Severus felt that there was something… almost normal about it. It was such a usual song that he didn't feel it told him anything very striking about Robards.
Oh, there were points from which he might draw hypotheses, which he could compare over time to Robards' behavior. It had been unusually understanding about what Slytherin's opinions were supposed to have been, for one thing, and by not treating the Houses alphabetically it cast Hufflepuff inclusiveness in a less offensive light than usual, besides being heavily weighted towards what learning could be used for. More, he thought it might hint that Robards knew more about Flitwick did for the ICW than did most. But it was, at bottom, nothing more or less than the eighth Sorting Song Severus had heard.
Looking pleased, Slughorn took the hat. He had to reach up a bit to get it.
"Very nice, very nice indeed, Gawain!" Dumbledore cried, applauding politely. This forced everyone else to applaud politely as well, although the younger teachers looked bored and Flitwick was occupied by applying blotting paper, turning a page, and dipping his quill. Severus noticed with interest that the older teachers, apart from Filius, looked more relieved than could be explained by something they had to hear every year being over—and, despite that, still tense. "A sound effort indeed!"
"Er, what?" Robards blinked. "That felt very odd there at the end, I'm afraid I may have missed something."
"To be expected, to be sure," Dumbledore assured him soothingly. "And now you, my dear Professor Trelawney. As you can see, there's no cause for concern."
Trelawney looked as if she didn't agree, and was in fact being eaten alive by misgivings. She let Slughorn hat her, though.
Her eyes glazed over at once, without all the preceding conversation. Severus was watching her with almost the same idle curiosity as everyone else, but then his eye was caught by some little gesture of Dumbledore's. Then he was speared in the forehead by a thrown pike that shouted DISPLAY NO REACTION from the middle of his brain. He would have reeled and flinched, except that the command was so urgent. Later, he'd console himself that it hadn't felt in the least like the Imperius looked from the outside. Screeching, not soothing at all.
He understood at once why Dumbledore was shouting at him, because Sibyll Trelawney's rolling echo of a voice-in-trance was so familiar that he stopped being a human person sitting in a chair and became a bag of skin full of crawling revulsion.
When he stopped seeing Voldemort's face turning into the jaw-unhinged one of a sickly wrong-colored cobra and sniff-licking Lily's bright hair and the room was almost solid around him again, except for the feeling that it was wanly rippling, he dropped his eyes from the prophet's face.
He hadn't seen it before. Not really, not to register. They had passed each other on his way out of the room, before his knees gave. She'd passed through his vision, palely, in front of adrenaline-soaked eyes that weren't seeing much. After a harrowing, touch-and-go fencing match with a dangerous enemy with unfathomable motives. In a corridor, outside a room made up for interviews. Upstairs, in a tavern. In the Hog's Head.
It wasn't her fault. How could it be?
It wasn't his fault. She'd been so loud, everyone in that tavern must have heard. They must have. The sort of clientele Aberforth Dumbledore had, at least one of them would have known what he'd heard, would have run to get out, to sell it before the old men could steal his memories.
He'd had to make sure the Dark Lord heard it in context, properly spun, all its ambiguities underlined, the treacherous ambiguity of all prophesies underlined thrice and circled in red ink. And he hadn't even known who was meant.
Things had just happened. Fate, if you believed in that rot. It had nothing to do with this nobody. It wasn't her fault.
If he fled this room right now and never saw her again, it would be too soon.
Frantic for another subject, his gaze landed on Flitwick's book. It was still open with his quill poised on it. Apparently Flitwick had expected her to say more than,
"Steadfast under stars,
What fortune to be allowed!
The future beckons."
But there wasn't any more. He forced his eyes back to the prophet who thought herself a huckster, because that was where everyone else was looking. Looking warily and with rather large eyes, in Robards' case. The others looked worried in quite a different way, as if she'd proved her credentials for a difficult, dangerous, and necessary mission to be entirely lacking. All Severus saw was a grown-up child having what looked exactly like a normal Sorting argument.
"No, no, there's no question," the hat said at last, out loud, "I couldn't possibly put you anywhere besides RAVENCLAW!"
She looked pleased but puzzled as she took it off and handed it back to Slughorn. "It said to ask you the difference between an aspiration and an ambition," she said.
"A plan," Kettleburn said promptly, smirking a little but with a touch of rue in his voice.
"An effort," Babbling added with self-satisfaction.
"Discipline," concluded Severus grimly. Looking at her was still making him feel sick, but it would have looked odd at this point if he hadn't joined in.
"Execution, in a word," Slughorn summed up, smiling, and held out the wretched object. "And now for yours, m'boy."
Severus glowered at him, and reached out sullenly to take it.
"Oh no," the hat protested. Out. Bloody. Loud. "Not a chance, Albus. This one's a bloody menace."
"…Right," Severus decided, suddenly overwhelmingly done, and spun up out of his chair to stride for the door.