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Last summer had been the first since 1982 that he had opted not to stay at the school. This summer marked the second year running that he chose to stay away. Least, she thinks it was his choice. Last year, the reasoning was certain - the scars of Albus’ betrayal cut deep. Righteous as ever, no doubt – Remus Lupin was a good man, and Sirius Black not the traitor all had once presumed – but following the fallout from Severus’ outburst in the Slytherin common room, Minerva was under no illusion: the schoolboy warring to which she and Horace had scarcely given credence was far from inconsequential.
For all his faults – and they were numerous, for the man seemingly relished in antagonism, far too spiteful and cutting for one so young - Severus was not a man to bear a needless grudge. She, or Albus, or anyone else might find his reasons petty, but he rarely lacked justification, even if he refused to divulge his internal logic to others. She was certain that his continued bitterness at the merest mention of either Remus or Sirius meant there was a shared history between the men that she was unlikely to unpick to her satisfaction. Least, not at this point, more than two decades after the fact.
She’d asked Remus, of course. A kind, polite, affable chap – he was almost entirely opposite in nature to the prickly Head of House with whom she had long associated. Remus remained much like the suffering teenager she recalled from his days in Gryffindor, displaying scant evidence of the hardship the world had seen fit to bestow upon him during the intervening years. Yet despite his pleasant demeanour, Minerva found herself unnerved – to hear him speak, there was naught between the men – not now, and mostly certainly not back then. Perhaps a common house rivalry, he'd conceded – and Merlin knows, she’d refereed enough of those during her tenure at Hogwarts – or a whisper of jealousy over Quidditch talent and the price of broomsticks, but nothing more.
Nothing more.
It simply didn’t sit right. It didn’t fit with the profile of the man she knew so well, the unlikely boy turned successful teacher. They’d all written him off back then – she recalled scanning the NEWT results for that year, irritated that an intelligent and talented youth had progressively been consumed by his own anger and fury as he aged into a man. Where once there had been hope, by the cusp of adulthood he seemed destined to be confined between four of the dark and damp walls of Azkaban. Perhaps Horace had retained his optimism, but even then, it would've been due to the boy’s curious connections to Lucius Malfoy – a connection that caused all others to trust him a little less; after all, for all his protestations of innocence and his disarming smile, Lucius Malfoy was not a man upon whom others could rely.
In the end, it hadn't been Azkaban that snared Severus Snape. He'd gone missing for a year or two - seemingly vanished off the face-of-the-earth, as so many of his Slytherin peers had done: the youngest Rosier, the eldest Fenwick, the Zabini girl and even Sirius' brother, young Reggie Black. Indeed, had Albus Dumbledore not bade him through the corridors of Hogwarts once more, Minerva was certain that she would never have given Severus Snape a further thought, confident that fate had led him to destitution or death – perhaps, at the very best, lifelong imprisonment in either Azkaban or Strangeways.
It never once crossed her mind that he would be a fixture at Hogwarts.
But all these years on, he was. In his first few weeks of teaching, she had been a permanent resident in Albus’ office, feet pacing, wand twitching, demanding to know what he was doing letting a Death Eater into the castle. Albus mollified her for months, before his patience shifted at the brink of the new year. The boy had clearly suffered some sort of nervous breakdown in the middle of autumn, and her continued griping was no longer received with understanding. Albus had muttered something about his parents, and although she did not know for certain that his words were less than truthful, she had not missed the juxtaposition between the young man’s faltering mood and the demise of the Dark Lord.
His Dark Lord.
Least, that had been her accusation. Her reward for such a claim was to receive the young man following her office hours – 8.30 through 10 on a Friday night. Horace had fled, and the weight of both Potions and Slytherin House had landed in his lap.
“It’s too much,” she’d warned. “You’ve seen the state of him.”
The Headmaster had paused for a long moment, as if giving serious consideration to her words, and then smiled. “I believe that a focus upon his work is the necessary distraction our young friend requires.”
“He is not nearly ready.”
“His qualifications are sublime.”
She had huffed. “In potion making, perhaps, but in dealing with teenagers? Vulnerable teenagers, Albus!”
“There is no other Slytherin member of staff in the castle,” Albus quickly argued. “Given the fallout from Halloween, the house is suffering already. Minerva, those vulnerable teenagers of which you speak – it would be the ultimate humiliation if I were to bestow upon them a Head of House who was not a snake.”
In reality, much of the work had fallen on Minerva’s shoulders – marking her own papers, and then marking his marking. Listening to the woes of her own students, and then listening to the woes of the Slytherins secondhand in Severus’ weary tones, doling out advice and vainly attempting to repair any inadvertent damage caused by Severus’ instinctive reactions.
“Really, Severus! These boys are 13 years old - you cannot tell him to hex in retaliation!”
Severus had shrugged. “Pomfrey can fix up their injuries.”
“Madam Pomfrey’s role is to keep the students safe – not to repair injuries to the students that their Head of House has encouraged.”
At this, he had snarled. “I did not encourage Mr Bulstrode to cast the jinx in the first place. I rather suspect that Mr Carrow’s response will cause Mr Bulstrode to think twice in future.” He sat back, his arms folded, and a confident smirk covering his features. “Pomfrey might have to fix them up on this occasion, but next week, neither boy should have need to show his face in the Infirmary.”
She would never have admitted that he had been correct in his assumption. Different approaches, that was all. But he had been a quick and diligent study, rapidly changing from the hesitant and flushing youth who walked half a pace behind Horace Slughorn into a confident and waspish man who strode around the castle with purpose. When Albus had commented that he had adopted her manner of holding a classroom’s attention with a mere whisper, she had waved him out of her study – but had permitted herself a tight smile when she nursed a small tot of whisky that night.
As the years had peeled by – his continued association with slippery Lucius Malfoy notwithstanding – she had almost forgotten the dark teenager he had once been. His spells were swift and confident, and besides Albus, he was the teacher she desired by her side when anything dangerous or dark occurred. Reliable. Practical. Useful.
She didn’t know enough of his background to question why he had been admitted into Slytherin; the house was strongly coded through bloodlines, and his magic so powerful, she was certain that he was the last in a long line of Slytherin ancestors. In the intervening years, she proofread his submissions to Potions periodicals, quietly musing that he had such a sharp mind, he perhaps could’ve been in Ravenclaw. In silent moments, she mulled on his loyalty to her, and his forlorn following of Albus – no matter how sharply the old man treated him – and couldn’t help but ponder if he had somehow been a misplaced Hufflepuff.
It had never occurred to her that he could’ve been a Gryffindor.
Not until that night.
A few years earlier, she’d have been gleeful and angry in equal measure – her accusation of him being one of the Dark Lord’s men having been accurate all along. But that night, when he yanked his sleeve up in defence of Albus, when he thrust it before Fudge, and then disappeared into the darkness upon Albus’ direct instruction, she simply felt sick.
“Why?”
And at that, he had shrugged. But this wasn’t his usual, nonchalant, uncaring shrug. It was laced with uncertainty, his nostrils flared. “I do not have an answer which will please you, Professor.”
“Professor?”
He had not looked up. “Professor is fitting. Minerva was my colleague. Min was my…friend.”
“I remain so.”
“Do you? Even now?”
“Even now.”
She had many questions – many things she wanted to know, needed to know – but before she could speak, Albus had appeared and had bustled her away.
“You can ask me.”
“I want to ask Severus.”
“Anything Severus knows, I know.”
“Albus…”
“I trust him. I trust him entirely, Minerva. I trust him with my life.” He had cocked his head. “Forgive me for being presumptuous, but that is what you wished to hear, was it not?”
“If it is the truth.”
“It is.”
Such placating may have won Minerva around, but as she took her seat at Grimmauld Place, she was aware that Albus’ word did not carry the same weight for all.
“Hagrid sends his apologies,” Albus started, as he took his seat at the top of the table. “You must be assured that this house is well protected and disguised, but of course, London in any form is hardly the place for a half-giant to remain inconspicuous.” There was a faint rumble of amusement around the table. “The rest of you…”
“-I am surprised you have permitted us all to meet in one place,” Remus said, mildly. “I recall such meetings being sparsely attended back in the day.” His comment met with an uneasy silence, and Minerva’s eyes quickly cast around the room, noting those who looked down at the table, or away to the walls. “Ah,” Remus continued, “I see.”
“Moony-”
Albus shook his head. “Sirius, it is not your apology to make.”
“But I thought-”
“We all thought he was the traitor,” Hestia Jones interjected. “We all suspected you, Remus, and for that, I am sure that we all apologise.”
“Pettigrew,” Dedalus Diggle muttered darkly. “Now, Remus we suspected. Frankie Longbottom. Marlene. Benjy. Even Caradoc, Merlin rest his soul.” He then touched his hat towards Molly Weasley. “And forgive me, Molly, but even your brothers were – at one time or another – excluded from the group.”
“-but never the rat,” spat Sirius.
“No,” Elphias mused. “Funny really, how we didn’t suspect a rat. Still,” he said, smiling tightly at the group around the table, “we’re all here now.”
“Not quite,” said Albus.
Sirius leant back on his chair, his eyebrows raised. “Not…quite..?”
“We do, in fact, have Pettigrew’s opposite number.”
Alastor Moody snorted. “Opposite number. About as trustworthy, as well.”
At this, Sirius slammed the legs of his chair down onto the tiled floor. “Not in my house, Dumbledore.”
“Ah, but you gave use of your house for Headquarters, did you not, Sirius?” Albus’ voice was soft.
Sirius did not respond, but his glare was fierce.
“And this man,” Albus continued, “I must assure you all, is a longstanding member of the Order of the Phoenix. Longer than many of the faces I see here today - Nymphadora, Kingsley, Bill, Charlie-”
“Longstanding..?” Dedalus' face contorted in confusion. “Now, see here, Dumbledore – Sirius, Emmeline, Alastor, Elphias, Remus, Sturgis, you, me, Fi-”
“-tell me, do you remember, Dedalus, that in our final year of war, we were better prepared than before? That we knew where the next attack would come from, and how many to expect? Do you remember the dead-ends, and the traps, and how we evaded almost all – after spending the better part of a decade losing valuable comrades left, right and centre?”
Dedalus gave a barely imperceptible nod. “I remember.”
Elphias interjected, leaning over the table. “Yes, you had…a source, you said? A new, reliable source.”
Minerva swallowed hard.
“Indeed, I had a source,” Albus softly confirmed. “A new, reliable source who,” and he whipped out his pocket watch in a flourish, “as we speak amongst ourselves, is currently in a meeting with the Dark Lord and his highest ranking fellows.”
The gasps of the group were immediate, and a low hum buzzed around the room.
“No, Dumbledore,” Sirius snapped, standing up, “you can’t trust him.”
“His information would be valuable,” Remus said quickly, pulling on Sirius’ sleeve and guiding him back into his seat, “if he is truly on our side.”
“It’s a big if,” Alastor muttered, ignoring the look of displeasure across Albus’ face.
“You would say that about any spy.” Tonks spoke for the first time, ignoring the scowl her mentor flashed in her direction. “It's a risk we should con-”
“-he is not a risk! He is a Death Eater,” Sirius barked unhappily. “A Death Eater.”
“He is ours,” insisted Albus.
“Ours! It is not enough,” Sirius argued. “I will not have a Death Eater in this house.”
“You will,” she said, almost surprising herself when she heard her clipped Scottish brogue cutting through the air - but just as in the classroom, once she started, the others fell silent and attention turned to her. “I was once a spy. For the Ministry. It is a lonely road that he treads, but the information he-”
Sirius banged his fist on the table. “The information he feeds us could lure us to our deaths!”
“You said it yourself, Mr Black, you trusted a rat for no reason other than he was once your housemate.”
“That was diff-”
“Severus Snape,” Minerva continued, “is my housemate. He has been my housemate since before the Dark Lord fell. And if Albus trusts him implicitly, and if I trust him implicitly-”
“-then I trust him implicitly,” said Tonks decisively, ignoring the scowl covering Alastor’s face, but gaining a broad smile from both Albus and Minerva.
“Marvellous,” said Albus, clapping his hands together. “Then let us pull up a chair, and make the boy welcome. He shall be here at any moment.”