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He silently took the chair opposite her desk, and as his rear met the smooth leather seat, he was instantly transported to four years earlier - back to the summer’s day when she’d called him to her office to interrogate him about his knowledge of Sirius Black’s hexing in the bottom corridor of the dungeons.
Severus bit back a half smile at the memory; the idiot’s hair had been green for the best part of a month. He hadn’t had any sympathy for him - Sirius had hardly been visiting the dungeons to say a friendly hello to his fellow students, and in Severus’ book, such behaviour warranted preemptive action.
Not that he’d been directly involved. Not on that occasion. It was all Mulciber, and Sirius’ beloved brother, Regulus. Which meant that McGonagall hadn’t been able to pin any of the blame on him, but she’d still stared at him over those thin-rimmed wire glasses which were perched atop the bridge of her slender nose, and his palms had sweated, and his heart had thrummed in his chest in exactly the same manner as it was doing now.
Fuck this.
No, really. Fuck this.
He wasn’t a student, or a child - and he wasn’t a troublemaker. He hadn’t even been one back then. And this time, sitting here as an adult, he resented her more than ever. He really hadn’t done anything wrong; he was in this blasted office because of selfish, boorish, hateful Horace Slughorn. And Albus bloody Dumbledore. And maybe, just maybe, in some terrible twisted way, Sirius Orion Black - because if that bastard hadn’t betrayed James Potter…
The thought of Potter caused him to press his nails into his palms, leaving crescent moons imprinted on his skin, and only pulling away when he felt the skin break and blood pool beneath his fingertips. He’d despised Potter for years, but the mere thought of him now didn’t conjure up the burning, rolling, boiling hatred that had coiled in his stomach for so many years. No, nowadays he felt a sharp shard of ice penetrating his chest instead - a creeping coldness filling his body with dread, with the knowledge that smirking, smarmy, good-for-nothing Potter was dead…and he’d taken Lily to her grave with him.
Severus inhaled sharply, and stared at the ceiling as he tried to pull himself together; he wouldn’t break. Least, not here - not here in front of Professor Minerva McGonagall and her bloody Gryffindor crest, and her damned red and gold House Cup and blasted Quidditch trophy.
“Well,” she started, suddenly breaking the silence, “these aren’t as terrible as the last lot. But there’s really no need for this sort of thing.” She passed him a scruffy parchment, and her finger tapped the foot of the page where his own handwriting slashed across the sheet. This is a facile generalisation which fails to take into account any of the arguments presented within the set text. If you had bothered to read any of the chapters that were given as part of this very homework you would’ve already drawn this conclusion yourself. T.
He hated her. He absolutely fucking hated her and her sanctimonious attitude. He was doing his best - couldn’t she see that? It wasn’t his fault that Horace Slughorn had upped and run, and it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know how to respond to the inane comments littered throughout the students’ essays. What sort of student didn’t even bother to read the set chapters before starting their homework?
“It was facile,” he ground out. “She cited Lazenby. Lazenby, Professor!” He threw his hands in the air. “What sort of fool quotes Lazenby in 1981?”
“A thirteen year old,” McGonagall retorted. “Your job is to coax these students, Severus - not to extinguish any interest they might have in the subject.”
“If they had any interest, they wouldn’t be quoting Lazenby.”
“I dimly recollect reading twelve inches of parchment citing Wójcik…”
He glared at her.
“…when any decent Transfiguration student surely understood that his work had been surpassed by Varga-”
He grabbed the papers off her desk and held them to his chest. “I never said that I was a decent Transfiguration student,” he spat, “nor that I had any interest in your idiotic subject!”
“Severus!”
“Really, Headmaster,” she said, pacing back and forth in the study. “I do not feel he has the temperament required to deal with the students.” She paused, and glanced at Dumbledore. “Or his fellow staff members for that matter. He is…a child.”
“He is not a child,” Dumbledore said, quietly. “It may shock us all that the years fly by with such haste, but I should remind you that Severus is twenty-two in a few short weeks.” He tipped his head to one side. “I trust you will remember to send him a card-”
As McGonagall opened her mouth to respond, the door to the study swung wildly open, thumping against the wall with a loud crash.
“Albus.” Moody swept into the room, his face hard. He nodded at McGonagall. “Professor.”
“Alastor! What is the meaning of this?” she said, hurrying to shut the door he’d left open. “Has your time in the field left you unable to recall your manners within polite company? Such as knocking?”
Moody gave a tight smile. “I assure you, if this school were under the control of anyone other than Albus, I wouldn’t have bothered heading to this room at all.”
At that, Dumbledore stood. When he spoke, his voice was calm, but his eyes were filled with dark fury. “Alastor?”
“I have come for the fugitive, Albus.”
Dumbledore scoffed. “Alastor-”
“The boy is mine,” Moody said, holding a piece of Ministry headed parchment aloft. “I am taking him tonight.”
McGonagall took the proffered paper and her free hand covered her mouth as she read the charges. “…Albus?”
Dumbledore straightened his sleeve, his wand slipping down into his hand. As smooth as the movement was, it did not go unnoticed by Moody, who also slid his own wand into his fist in response.
“He was named, Albus. Whatever this was, it’s over.”
“Albus? Alastor?” McGonagall looked from one man to the other. “Really? I know the boy has-”
“Alastor, you may be unaware that both Severus and I visited the Ministry last week,” Albus intoned, loudly, snapping his fingers and causing a roll of parchment to fly into his hands. “He signed his charge sheet, of which I have a copy.” He unravelled it and held it before Moody. “He has been released into my custody until the day of the trial.”
“It’s been revoked. He has been named.”
Dumbledore looked incredulous. “Why would the Ministry revoke his bail based on the accusation of another?” He brandished the paper again. “He has already admitted to the crime!”
Moody gave a slight shake of his head. “I respect you, Albus, which is why I came here today. This wasn’t intended to be an argument - merely a courtesy.”
“They’re down there now, aren’t they?”
Moody didn’t answer, but glanced towards the window, and both teachers hurriedly moved towards it. Peering through the glass, they could see their young colleague in the distance, being dragged across the grounds in the darkness, his arms tightly bound behind him.
He was even thinner since he’d returned, which she hadn’t thought would be possible, and there were dark blue circles under his eyes. His hair was unwashed - almost as greasy as it had been when he’d first set foot in the school as a tiny boy. Studying him more closely, she could see the tell-tale darkness on his skin around his fraying collar, showing that it’d had been many days since he’d last washed; she’d seen the same tidemark on the neck of many a Gryffindor teenage boy over the years, and she’d dragged them kicking and screaming into the showers.
Still, as Albus had pointed out, this wasn’t a teenage boy who didn’t know how to look after himself. Severus was a grown man, and a breath caught in her chest as the realisation dawned: he wasn’t a child who was too lazy to bathe - he was a grown man who had given up.
“Don’t,” he snapped, violently spearing a floret of broccoli with his fork.
“Don’t? Don’t what?”
“Don’t play innocent. It’s unbecoming of a woman of your stature.”
She bristled at his words, and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Severus, but you’ll have to explain.”
He stabbed his food again, the prongs meeting the porcelain and emitting a horrible screeching noise that echoed across the Great Hall. “Don’t gawp at me like I’m an exhibit in a museum!”
A sudden hush swept across the tables, with all of the students staring at the teachers. Dumbledore glanced over at the pair, and then coughed, loudly resuming a conversation with Professor Flitwick. Slowly, the tables followed his lead, and all of the students started to eat once more.
It was like picking at a scab. She desperately didn’t want to know the answers - didn’t want to believe the worst of her fellow teacher, but simultaneously, she couldn’t leave it alone. She couldn’t reconcile the talented, albeit sullen, Slytherin student she’d known as being one of…them.
“…when do you go back?”
He ignored her, and she watched on as he pulverised the soggy vegetables on his plate into a unappetising mush.
In the early hours of the morning, Severus sat on the floor of his private quarters, his back resting heavily against the cold wall, and his legs stretched out before him. He drew a deep breath, and then cast at the rattling cupboard, causing a Dementor shaped Boggart to fly towards him. He felt the cold tendrils of the creature as it took hold, and he focused on pulling his Occlumency shields down.
Three hours later, just as morning started to break, he lay face down on the floor, his hair sprawled wildly around him and his magic utterly spent. After ten long minutes, he hauled himself up into a seated position, and fumbled in the drawer by his bed, grabbing a large bar of half-eaten chocolate and breaking a few small squares off.
“I’m fucked,” he gasped, his voice cracking. “I am so fucked.”
He cast weakly, causing a book from his shelves to spiral towards him. It fell open at the chapter he’d almost memorised: How to repel Dementors.
Severus ran his finger over the page as he read, desperately searching for something he’d missed - but no, all of the solutions were the same; all intended to be performed for short periods of time, and not to be harnessed by a man condemned to Azkaban. His gaze lingered on the final paragraph, with the illustration below of an elderly wizard casting a Patronus.
He should’ve been proud. Dumbledore had taught him that spell all those months ago, when the leader of the Order had first taken him under his wing and guided him to the side of the light. Even now, Severus felt a small bubble of satisfaction that he’d been able to show that he was not been the dark, uncaring, unfeeling man that everyone assumed he was. He’d been able to find a true source of good within himself - enough to cause the sprightly bright fox to bound across the country, even harnessing sufficient power to enable him to communicate verbally with Dumbledore.
On a whim, he whipped his wand through the air, and shouted: “Expecto Patronum!”
He gave a half smile - it was such an overt spell, with none of the subtlety he favoured, but when he glanced up, the smile dropped from his face, for his silver fox was not circling the room. Instead, in its place was a beautiful, graceful, gentle doe. Panicking, Severus felt behind him with his other hand, his long slender fingers grasping at the cool wall but not finding any purchase. His heart beat rapidly and with his wand waving in front of him, he whispered: “Dumbledore?”
And then she was gone, and he slumped back to the floor, his robes sodden with cold sweat.
It took a lot to unnerve Albus Dumbledore.
But when Lily Potter’s doe burst into his chambers, circled his bed and then headed back towards the door, Albus leapt from his bed with a vigour that no one would’ve expected from a wizard who had just celebrated his centenary.
He would’ve been lying if he hadn’t said that he’d ventured across the castle with a sick feeling creeping up his chest, but as soon as his feet met the cold stone steps of the dungeon, he knew exactly where the doe was leading him - long before he finally pushed open the heavy door to reveal the sobbing form of his young potions master.