Still the Boardroom
Severus wondered whether there were any linguistic connections between the words colloportus and claustrophobia, however far removed. He certainly felt them to be thematically related.
“I’m sure you’ll be great friends once you’ve got over this little hump,” Dumbledore said implacably, slipping his wand back up his sleeve.
“Yes, sir,” Severus retorted, momentarily forgetting himself in a blur of apprehension, pique, and the smart of old wounds. “You always are.”
“May I point out, Severus, that the four of you left one integral point out, in your otherwise admirably comprehensive definition of ‘ambition’?” Dumbledore asked mildly.
Crossing his arms defensively, the locked door unforgiving against his back, Severus swallowed all his words and raised one attempting-to-be-respectful eyebrow.
The cursed man twinkled at him. “Optimism.”
In Severus’s current mood, he would have done a header out the window before admitting the bastard had a point. So instead he growled, “That doesn’t distinguish it from aspiration, which is nothing more than a wistful sigh.”
“Ah,” Dumbledore continued to twinkle, “but without that fortifying breath, no movement is possible.”
“I thought we were having a staff meeting,” McGonagall said sharply, looking as if she badly wanted to tap her foot and possibly roll her eyes.
“Indeed, my dear Professor, indeed,” Dumbledore said soothingly. “And as soon as Master Snape is properly re-introduced to Hogwarts, we may, in fact, be finished with it.”
This was accompanied by such a pointed (and twinkly) look that Severus was forced to acknowledge that his only civilized choice was to return to his chair. If he did it with his hackles up and his hair falling around his face, the sullen lack of grace was all Dumbledore deserved.
“I haven’t agreed to this!” the Hat protested.
“My dear Gwyllim,” Dumbledore soothed it, “I am entirely certain that you have no cause for concern. Does it, Severus?”
Having been jolted out of his silent snarl by the painful evidence that the hat had been given, at some point in its long history, not only a name and a Welsh name but an aptonym and, most revoltingly, a name beginning with G, Severus shrugged. “A ‘good’ compromise may be one where everyone goes away dissatisfied,” he said carefully, “but in the aftermath of an honorable one, everyone is satisfied for their own reasons.”
Because he’d always half-suspected that the wretched thing had sent him to be a knutless half-blood in Slytherin out of spite over his burst of accidental magic, right from the first evening, when Luke had taken advantage of his role as a prefect to curse the river-rat’s hands into flippers. This had clearly been, whatever Luke had said, not for talking to Lily at the feast but for objecting to Luke teasing some tiny, prissy little blond girl on the Express by pulling her hair.
A Gryff might have laughed it off and saved face by clapping Severus on the back and announcing to all and sundry that he had spunk or spirit. Lily had in fact approved, although the prissy blond herself had just given him a will-you-be-a-useful-bug look.
(It was probably the only reason she’d lowered herself that evening to help make his clothes respectable, though, whatever she’d been bribed with. If he’d gone to some other house it wouldn’t have mattered, but she wouldn’t have wanted to leave a debt to a fellow-Slytherin with no sense of propriety hanging open.)
Luke (Junior-Prefect Malfoy, the ponce) had not been amused at all. On the personal level, he’d been tolerantly punitive because firsties had to learn they had no business mouthing off to older boys with badges.
After that toffee-nosed knob Evan Rosier had absconding with all his rags to make Narcissa turn them into something resembling school uniforms, also quietly slipped Severus a book for no apparent reason, Severus learned that the main reason he’d been made to think he was going to be dropped head-first off a moving train was because Malfoy had been offended by a grubby little pleb horning in on any interaction between his family and the Blacks.
Everyone who’d watched Luke frog-march him at wandpoint to be dangled terrifyingly over the rail until the Head Boy got wind of it understood exactly what was going on when Prefect Malfoy had made a further example of him that evening.. Luke had got away with it, though, by explaining in a loud, clear voice that his hex had been a warning to Severus not to speak with such a dreadful accent. The excuse of teaching him to be a climber everyone would despise had made torturing him for behaving like a man ought to into laudable behavior.
And so Severus had understood that, however he personally felt about what Slytherin was supposed to stand for, the Hat had decided it was okay by the school if the upstart brat who’d mostly-accidentally tried to bully it back with fire were to be murdered in his bed, and the school was rather hoping he’d be broken.
Damned if he was going to give anyone else, especially his new immediate supervisor, any reason to suspect it, though. Besides, he had been satisfied, and still was. What did one come to school for, if not to learn to think, to learn how to handle the world?
“So it’s not going to try and kill me again,” the hat proposed warily, testing the idea out.
Severus shot it a dirty look. “Not unless it tries what it tried last time,” he retorted. “Which would be against all its own precedent, its decision already having been made, announced, and lived.”
“That’s what worries me,” the hat muttered into its brim, but let Slughorn pass the hat to Hagrid without further protest.
Folding his arms and glaring at Dumbledore, Severus announced, “SLYTHERIN,” himself, before Hagrid had quite put the thing onto him. The thing did not, in fact, always wait to be settled onto a student’s head before settling their fate, after all.
The moment its soft, musty weight was on him, he stopped hearing the professors snort at him, and rather heard it complain, “Which is exactly what I meant! You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done well in—”
“Yes, I can,” Severus retorted, grateful to know he wasn’t actually making any noise, “because I’m not a thug.”
“—Hufflepuff,” the Hat finished huffily. “You were as much an Abbott as a Prince, you know.”
“…Or a Hart, which is to say, not hardly,” Severus returned dryly, not quite before his thoughts had stopped being blank and full of blinking. Because Da’s mam was the only grandparent who’d never shown any sign of being ashamed of him while they were both alive, thankyouverymuch.
He didn’t care for her name being left out because she had no magic any more than he liked Da pretending she was just some respectable woman who’d never been on the stage and didn’t have any notorious cousins. She hadn’t been around long enough to help raise him at all, but he remembered her singing and making puppets out of scraps. Surely that counted for as much as Mam’s residual pureblood instincts.
He hadn’t forgotten, exactly, that it would have put him in his wizarding grandmother’s House as happily as his mother’s. Not forgotten, exactly; he did remember it, but only as one remembered facts that had been on one’s History of Magic exams, and weren’t going to come up even if one got into a heated argument about wand rights with a goblin.
It had never seemed important. One word, already eclipsed by the outrage that had come before it. Especially since he hadn’t known Julilla née Abbott at the time. Certainly not half as important as refusing to be in his wizarding grandfather’s House with those two nightmarish young snots who were everything he’d ever imagined the bastard to be.
“You would have been happier,” it told him shrewdly.
“I would have been harassed less,” he corrected, because the strongest, smartest, most loyal, and fiercest people he knew about would never have looked at him twice if they hadn’t been cooped up with him for years. “It’s not the same thing. Besides,” he added in a more conciliatory tone when the hat sighed grumblingly, “I already knew how to work hard. Working smart was what I needed.”
“And you think you got that, do you?” the hat demanded waspishly.
But Severus was more inclined to be charitable with it now. Not only had he realized their misunderstanding, but he felt he understood the thing’s criteria now. They were less manipulative—or, rather, less utilitarian than he’d assumed.
All adults were manipulative about trying to ensure the best for children. When adults were narrow-sighted and ruthless about maximizing a child’s potential in an area of their own choice, or making the child stick intractably to a shallow, uninformed childish choice made with an underdeveloped brain, that was not forgivable.
But perhaps that wasn’t, after all, what this was. Perhaps the Hat’s had been annoyed because it had wanted him not only to do well, but to be well. Perhaps it was only as annoyed as he would have been if he’d tried to teach Regulus to be safe from everything and Reggie hadn’t even heard he was talking.
So it was with a piece of a smile that he said, “It seems I’ll have another year for advanced study.”
The Hat made a noise that Severus translated without difficulty as oh bloody fucking Godric but I hate dealing with boys like you.
So he added, smugly, “See? You ought to have put me in the eyrie, after all.” Just in case anyone could read lips and might tell Slughorn later if he said ‘ravenclaw’ outright.
“I ought not,” the Hat replied with flat melodrama. Severus didn’t know whether he was being mocked or the thing took on some quality of the head it was on, but either way he didn’t like it. “You’d have blown it up within the year. Now be quiet and think about Hogwarts.”
“What about Hogwarts?” he asked, trying to give the thing on top of his head the side-eye. “It’s rather a large subject.”
“All about it,” it snapped.
“Certainly,” Severus agreed mildly, “Gwyllim. If you’ll tell me why my House’s Founder really left the school.”
“Trying to prove yourself a credit to him?” the Hat asked—a touch snidely, but not with what Severus considered to be really contemptuous amusement. “I keep the confidences of every head I touch.”
“But not from the Headmaster, I expect,” Severus mused. “Otherwise it’d be useless.”
“Hogwarts,” the thing scolded him.
“Why are the Slytherin dorms in what used to be the dungeons?” he pressed, folding his arms. He was going to get something useful out of this humiliation if it killed him.
It sighed, ruffling his hair unpleasantly. “Because Headmaster Swott was a diviner by profession and an avid admirer of Isaac Newton. When the winter of 1739 made constantly heating four towers to living standards an impossible drain on the castle’s magic, he took the opportunity to dedicate one to Astronomy.”
Severus sat back, rather charmed. “Two Houses live underground, now,” he pointed out. “The Common Rooms’ wall panels are all older than that.”
“Yes, well, elves are useful for that sort of thing. The Hufflepuffs felt moving belowground would be appropriate for badgers, once the idea arose, and since they volunteered to help with the move, they got first choice of locations. So the cellars moved to the library, which moved to the fourth tower and got a great clock where the picture window of Madam Hufflepuff used to be, and now we have no dungeons at all.”
“Alas for Filch,” Severus agreed dryly.
“Who?”
Severus stared up at the brim cutting off his view of the ceiling. “...Well, that won’t do at all,” he decided. That was sick. Filch had been working at Hogwarts at least ten years, because he hadn’t acted like a new hire when Severus had got there, and no one had spared him thought, had encompassed his eternal cranky guardianship in their broad conception of the place? Students routinely spent hours at a time dreaming up stupid names to call his stupid cat. “I’ll commence thinking about Hogwarts now.”
And he did, as intently and comprehensively as he could, but he got dizzy almost at once and his vision went grey, as if he were going into shock. The next thing he knew someone was levitating the thing off his head and everyone was bloody staring at him again.
Everyone except Flitwick, who had the book upright in front of him so Severus couldn’t see what was in it. He was comparing a page to a rather earlier page, and then a rather earlier page than that, and then a much earlier one. With an absolutely inscrutable expression.
Severus considered several opening remarks, including don’t let my dulcet murmur lead you astray, actually I can scream quite loudly. He settled for tersely asking Robards, “Are you still dizzy?”
Because Robards was the only one comparing whatever he’d said only to student experience and the sparrow’s haiku, not to Robards’ own song and whatever else had happened in this room over the years. He was only looking like he was stifling laughter at Trelawney’s expense, not as if Severus had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. And all he said was, “No, it passed very quickly.”
“Fine,” Severus nodded succinctly and, since it was in fact already passing, stood again. “Hagrid, about showing me to my office. Professor Slughorn, about those student files.”
He was halfway to the door when someone made a soft chicken noise. Without turning around, he snapped, “I will expend fortitude where and when there is cause to, Professor Digitalin, and as I was informed our business here would be concluded with this pantomime and I have, in fact, further business to attend to before we meet again, if no one else does, my summer vacation having been a working one, I will exercise it in the appropriate direction. Good night.”
But he was deprived the pleasure of the slamming the door behind him, because Hagrid followed, rather than led, him out.
“Well, now,” Hagrid commented. Severus could actually hear his beard quivering. “Most new teachers are a mite quieter in their first week, I must say.”
“Oh, shut up,” Severus groused, moving a step closer to him in the dark halls. It was absurd, but he couldn’t help feeling someone might jump out at him at any moment. They’d even said Peeves hadn’t manifested yet, so he was just being a gutless rabbit, but the sense of hungry, judicial eyes on him from every shadow, vicious like a wounded animal, was unshakable. “Anyway, why did they have you there and not Filch? You’re neither of you faculty—and neither am I, for that matter, I don’t think—and he’s been here almost as long.”
“Ah, well, Argus is busy going over one or two things with the elves, isn’t he?” Hagrid asked knowledgeably. “One of us has to stick about to show you firsties to your rooms. The other teachers do have summat to do before tomorrow, after all,” he added with what wasn’t quite a reproach, but was definitely telling Severus he’d been unfair, however understandably.
“I won’t keep you if you have to hurry back to guide those two, then,” he replied, not sure whether he ought to be warding off guilt, for making Hagrid take two trips, or the unpleasant feeling of being a chore. “I suppose I ought to get straight to work, it’s not as if I could say hullo to that damned Barghest of yours at this hour.”
“You ought to get straight to sleep, young Snape, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Hagrid returned, what passed for sternly with him. “Ripper’ll be right glad to have you tomorrow for tea.”
“He’s started eating people, then?”
“Don’t get cheeky, now,” Hagrid said, but not as if he especially minded. “Nah, I’ll have a cuppa with you if you’re offering, help you get the place set up a bit. I think the Professor wanted to see the girl home safe himself, and there’s one or two of those young ladies won’t mind showing the new Defense lad to his rooms, if I’m any judge. Any road, you won’t be letting the elves touch your precious papers and bottles and that, if I know you.”
“Too right,” Severus snorted. “Just a quick cup, then; I really ought to start reading up on the returning students tonight, and I’d rather unpack when it’s light out. I hope Slughorn does let me get away for tea tomorrow,” he added gloomily, “he sounded as if he had Plans.”
“You just tell him I’ve got to show you where patches of some special grass or other are in the forest,” Hagrid said slyly. “Now you’re allowed in it outside detentions.”
Severus turned up to him, mouth twitching. “Hagrid, you wouldn’t know the difference between asparagus and sparrowgrass if it bit you.”
“Reckon not, but you would,” Hagrid agreed, twinkling down at him conspiratorially. When he laughed, Hagrid asked, “What is the difference, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Severus replied, “Spelling,” and kept laughing while Hagrid indulgently elbowed him into a wall.
When they got to his ‘office,’ though, he wasn’t laughing. “Good grief,” he blurted, drawing back from it, “I expect Grindelwald has a nicer cell than this.”
“Why?” Hagrid asked. He was giving Severus a you’re-crazy look, but it was the Ah Yes Our Spike Has Once Again Said Something Mental one, which was fine. Nothing like the This Young Serpent Is Dangerous And We Always Knew He Was A Bit Off Are You Really Sure About This Headmaster look he’d been getting in the boardroom.
“Well, I was talking to people over there—”
“Over where?”
“Bulgaria, and—”
“Merlin love you, what were you doing in Bulgaria?”
Severus blinked back. “Finding out how Durmstrang does things, of course. And doing research for my mastery. I wouldn’t say it’s easy to speak safely with vampires if you go through their embassy, but it’s easier. At any rate, I was talking to people over there, and he’s still got quite a lot of support. I’d say more than half of them are more angry with Professor Dumbledore for fighting Grindelwald at all, rather than dragging his feet—you don’t have to look at me like that, I didn’t ask you to be angry with him, but really they all are.”
“They ought to be thanking him!” Hagrid scowled.
“Yes, well, they don’t,” Severus shrugged. “You can think what you like about it. It’s their country.”
“True enough,” Hagrid allowed, still looking scowly.
“In any case, there’d be a furor if he weren’t treated well,” Severus said, looking in subdued horror around the little room. There wasn’t much ‘around’ to look. “As opposed to the Führer there’d be if they’d treated him as well as they wanted to. And everyone’s very definite about how we’re barbarians for having dementors, which they absolutely do not have—”
His quoting tone was interrupted by Hagrid’s shudder. “Now, don’t let’s be talking about them,” he said in very definite tone. “This lot won’t look so bad in the morning—”
“This lot? What lot?”
“—Once you’ve got your things set up. Let’s just ask an elf for that tea, and—”
“Certainly not!” Severus drew himself up, insulted. “Host you here? I’d be ashamed. You wouldn’t even fit. I’ll bring some decent tea to your hut tomorrow. Or whenever Slughorn lets me out of his… foot skirt.”
“Er… no offense, but I don’t think he means to have you tailoring his robes,” Hagrid tried, mystified.
Severus rolled his eyes. “It's the part of a slug that… never mind,” he gave up crankily, and made a shoo gesture he’d probably be embarrassed about once he’d had more sleep, although he couldn’t be fussed at the moment. “Go somewhere you can stand up properly, you’re making my back hurt looking at you.”
“Ta,” Hagrid agreed, grinning at Severus, and turned to leave.
There was something in that big face that Severus didn’t understand. He wrestled with himself, then called, “Hagrid?”
“All right, Snape?” Hagrid turned back, looking concerned.
Cursing himself for his hesitancy, Severus asked, “You don’t… mind, do you?”
“Eh?”
“That is… it must be, for you and Filch… my being here, I know it’s… odd. Fish nor fowl, as they say.”
Hagrid looked at him in the dim corridor, then came back and patted him on the shoulder, so carefully it even felt gentle. “Don’t you fret, our Severus,” he charged him. “You’ll be who you’ll be. And what, come to that. I expect you think you’re fair growed… well, never mind. It don’t hurt me none, having you here, or ol’ grouchy-guts, either. Don’t you mind him, he will talk. Or any of those fine folks back there, come to that. You just do what you’re here for. Professor Dumbledore can tell a bowtruckle from a boggart, don’t you worry.”
While Severus was still trying to make sense of that, Hagrid winked, “I expect he can tell that there sparrowgrass from spattergroit, too,” and left him.
“That’s asparagus, you—!” Severus yelled at his back on pure reflex and, shaking his head, gave up. It had been a long day, and Hagrid didn’t currently deserve to be called a lump anyway.
Much.
He sighed. It must be nice, to be able to trust someone unequivocally like that. Or to feel able, rather, whether you really could or not. Especially someone with power over you. Back in Nelson, the religious muggles had always had an air of smug comfort about them.
On the other hand, being trusted like that was probably bad for Dumbledore’s moral character.
On the third hand (or, alternately, the first foot), he did seem to have a reasonably quarrelsome staff to corral on a regular basis, which probably went some way towards mitigating the damage. Severus could certainly join in on helping him there. There was probably no helping it even if Severus actively tried not to, if he was honest with himself,
Dumbledore seemed, however, to actively enjoy a level of professionalism that would have made Damocles Belby put his fists on his hips and start bellowing about how he expected his ducks to behave themselves and be a credit to him and anyone who insisted on acting like a Hogwarts firstie could spend the rest of the week playing tea-boy for the whole floor. Which Dumbledore could probably better afford to than could Belby, given the his office’s lack of highly volatile potions made primarily out of one of the nastiest contact poisons that ever pretended to be a pretty, pretty flower. So Severus probably didn’t have to actually grind his teeth flat trying to behave unexceptionally, as he’d tried (and, usually, failed) as a student.
Of course, Hagrid was wrong. Severus being here certainly hurt one person: Slughorn, who would have to spend a year wondering if he was really saying goodbye to his job or not.
And it might hurt everyone in the end. It was all well and good to say ‘the evil of having a fox among the hens is mitigated by that fox being known and being me,’ but how long would that last? If Dumbledore got a bit too clever, or if the Dark Lord demanded something of him whose harm he didn’t recognize, or couldn’t counter subtly…
No use in standing in the shadows of distant torches fretting over the unforeseeable, though.
The room was a student dorm in small. A wardrobe instead of a trunk, a writing desk and wooden chair, a bed with ugly canopies that would, if nothing else, preserve some warmth in this chilly stone room. At least there was shelving, but nowhere to sit and read comfortably, certainly nowhere to entertain. This was supposed to be all right for students, because they had their common rooms.
He hadn’t expected to entertain, exactly, and it made sense to him that the school might take measures to prevent such a very recent alumnus as himself from inviting any students into his room, even to discuss strictly academic matters. There were indeed such things as common rooms, and Slughorn’s office if privacy from students was needed.
Still, it rankled. There was an insult there. Too, he’d become spoiled, got used to having his own space. He could have invited Hagrid to tea at Dye Urn Alley, had invited both Slughorn and Flitwick. It felt like a constriction, and a collar.
It didn’t feel like anything Dumbledore would have thought of. Slughorn didn’t punish, although he did allow the punishments of others to stand when he was angry with you, or simply not especially impressed.
So Severus was inclined to blame the Deputy Headmistress. It might not be personal; she’d always been one of the stricter professors, when it occurred to her that a situation called for oversight. It was an insult, it was a cage, but he wouldn’t call it wrong until he knew if it had been ordered with malice.
Wearily, reluctantly, he stepped over the lintel and unshrunk his book bag. Filling the shelves was but the work of a wand-wave, and that was his unpacking done. Maybe it would reassure the others if he put things on the walls, like the illuminated herbals and extracts from the Yellow Emperor’s book he’d had up at St. Mungo’s. He didn’t have his scrolls here, though.
There was an en-suite, at least, and it wasn’t the soulless stall he’d half-expected even though this was Hogwarts. It had a sunken, padded, medieval bath rather than a shower, or even an old clawfoot with pipes. Severus supposed this sort of thing was conceivable when you had servants to maintain it, which of course Hogwarts did, and magic to summon and banish hot water, which of course Severus did.
An argument could even be made that this was a kind gesture: it wouldn’t get cold like a tub, no one could possibly expect him to clean it manually himself, and rotting padding wasn’t a concern, with elves about. The bath wasn’t nearly long enough for stretching out, but he might have to revise his initial conclusion that he hadn’t been provided with anywhere comfortable to sit and read.
There weren’t any pipes anywhere, and that made his skin tighten. He’d got used to pipes, Severus realized, got soft. While he hadn’t grown up with indoor plumbing, the students dorms had it. When he’d graduated, his roommate had presented him very firmly with a choice between acceding to an expensive flat with modern amenities and acceding to a house elf underfoot all the time, bullying them and telling tales to Callisto Rosier.
It had not, in Severus’s opinion, been much of a choice: he’d taken the hit to his pride and swallowed his last tattered shreds of class loyalty. He’d given in so completely as to let Evan buy furniture that turned velvet in winter and suede in summer, paint the bedroom ceiling with birds, and do any other fool thing he liked with his own money.
Evan hadn’t gone half as mad as Severus, after a summer in the Malfoy home, had feared. The lines were clean, the colors calm. Apart from a few gifts from Narcissa-and-appendage, Reggie, and Evan’s parents, they had no decorations Ev hadn’t made himself.
He had, however, put in a bathroom that was, in Severus’s opinion, even more ridiculously self-indulgent than the sofa. Which was saying something. The bathroom probably wasn’t more indulgent than the rug in front of the fire, but it had been quite far up there on Severus’s list of How Is This Possibly My Life.
Now he was appalled at himself: it was one thing to be ambitious and want trappings to communicate success, competence, and status to people whose respect would enable one to get things done, but quite another to quail and whinge at a lack of quite unnecessary comforts—say it properly: luxuries—that one hadn’t even grown up with.
This wasn’t going to be like Spinner’s End. He wouldn’t have to go out and pump in all sorts of weather to fill the ewer and basin, or find a well, or purify water from the lake. The necessary (as Da would have called it) looked medieval, but a moment’s examination of its carvings was encouraging and not smelly. When Severus dropped a button in, the button disappeared with a little glimmer of magic, in mid-air. And there was one of the castle’s familiar and everlasting loo rolls tucked into a hollow in the wall, so disgusting improvisation or humiliating conversations with elves would not, it seemed be required.
A hypothesis was beginning to form: that putting him here hadn’t been, per se, an idea McGonagall had had. Maybe it had just been so long since the school had housed any research fellows that no one had ever bothered to include the rooms intended for them in modernizations that dorm rooms, classrooms, and presumably teacher’s rooms had been given.
The Tartan had always seemed very busy. Very likely, being confronted with an extra task, she had noted that the castle had contingencies for it and given the matter no more thought. As was usual with her, while not as responsible as Severus might have wished, this seemed within the realms of reasonable.
He seemed to have been expected to bring his own candlesticks, and he hadn’t. An elf obliged. She was ecstatic to be asked for tea, but disappeared with an alarmed squeak when Severus thanked her and asked her name.
He sighed, and settled down with Slughorn’s notes on the returning Slytherins. It was looking like a long and dreary evening.
Until the vanishing cabinet opened from the inside.
For a moment he could only stare at Evan, who did not look significantly altered, and wonder what was wrong with himself. There was a reason he had no luggage, no clothes to put away, how could he have forgotten?!
But, he remembered slowly, he’d intended not to think about it. Hadn’t wanted give off any signals that said he was anything more than they expected. Unprofessional. Indiscreet.
Evan was talking to him, and he was giving back answers that probably more or less made sense, but the air was beginning to smell right, and there was a warm, unyielding hand holding fast in a circle around his wrist, and his head was a solid, thundering pulse of home, home, home.
Which was absurd. They weren’t going home, they were going to Evan’s horrible, sterile little hotel room of a nursery in Rosier Hall. Which would still be better than this.
Of course he let Evan pull him through the wardrobe. He would have let Evan pull him through Mordor.
(Going willingly didn’t mean going gracefully.)
But then they were home. Their home, their flat, their books and cool walls, their airy curtains and sky-paintings, their beckoning sofa and fireplace and the hall to their bedroom, their familiar lock on the door that had always led into a hall they shared with Hufflepuff neighbors. It didn’t now, because Severus could see Evan’s family’s mile-wide rose garden out the window instead of the unprivate noise of London.
Severus had, over the years, had to scathingly shoot down several accusations that he considered himself to be a genius. He wasn’t one (although he would, in trusted company, cop to being a polymath, as that was term wizards never understood), but he didn’t have to be. The situation was perfectly clear: Evan’s name was spelled wrong. It needed its vowels switched, and it needed to start with an H. The second E was optional.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t realized this years ago, but now that they’d been through that ritual in the caves, admitting it was probably mandatory rather than unforgivably soppy.
Very well: if admitting it was mandatory then Severus would do so, but he still wasn’t doing it out loud. Ev had far too much hair; if his head got any bigger he wouldn’t be able to wear hats at all and he’d overbalance when he walked.
“…Why can’t I wear hats?” Evan asked, bemused, steering him down the hall.
“I imagine they’d be uncomfortable in bed,” Severus said calmly, “and if I just said that out loud, we must repair to bed without delay.”
“That I can’t wear hats,” Evan asked, his eyes crinkling up in the way that was someday going to make permanent crows-feet Severus was really looking forward to, “or that they’d be uncomfortable in bed?”
Severus met the dancing, crinkled-up sea-green in a grim, desperate stare, and bit off, “Either.”
Evan lasted about three seconds before the laughter fountained out. Severus sulked all the way to bed, but he wasn’t fooling anybody and somehow he couldn’t even mind.