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Chapter Text

“There it is.” Severus spoke quietly, holding up a hand when Minerva would have started forwards. “Weren’t you the one who told me that we didn’t want to startle it?”

“He, Severus,” Minerva muttered to him. Her back was up as if she was contemplating turning into a cat to pounce on their problem child. Her eyes were certainly fixed on it. “He’s still a human boy.”

“And he’s going to wish he wasn’t when I catch him,” Severus muttered, and carefully drew his wand.

The idiot in question was currently sitting on the banister of the Grand Staircase, head cocking back and forth as the light reflected off his brilliant blue feathers. How the boy had managed to Transfigure himself into a kingfisher, when his class had supposedly been tasked with turning small boxes into them, Severus would never know. And he had been in the bird’s body for long enough by now that he had no trace of a human mind left.

If there had been a human mind there in the first place, which Severus was beginning to doubt.

“We ought to get an owl in here,” Severus added under his breath. “Weren’t you the one who told me they’re the primary predators of kingfishers?”

“Raptors in general, Severus, not owls.” Minerva didn’t have to sound so patient about everything. Then again, it was better than her sounding smug because she’d managed to escape the Headmaster’s job while sticking him with it. “And we can’t trust one of them not to hurt the boy, unfortunately. He looks too much like a real bird not to fire their prey instincts.”

“Would a bit of pain keep him from doing this again?”

Minerva sent him a chiding look, and then changed abruptly into a cat and sprang at their idiot student with her paws out. Severus started, and the kingfisher took flight with a loud, surprised beat of its wings.

Minerva missed, and crashed to the steps of the Grand Staircase, spitting in fury. Meanwhile, the kingfisher turned and soared down the corridor that led towards the Hufflepuff common room. Severus hissed and lowered his wand. Maybe, with any luck, the hungry stones down that corridor would eat him.

*

It all started because of those mindless Ravenclaw seventh-years who decided it would be fun to practice a sex magic ritual in Hogwarts at midnight on a new moon night.

Severus still had no idea what they’d done or how exactly they’d managed it. Runes wasn’t his area, and Bathsheda just started waxing lyrical about how wonderful and clever the students were when he asked, so he’d started ignoring her while she talked. But somehow the runes the seventh-years had used had had a lot of effects, including revealing hidden rooms in Hogwarts itself and making the stones in the dungeons come to life and try to eat anyone who was snogging or having sex anywhere near them.

Severus would have been all in favor of that last effect if they could have retrieved the students within a few hours, suitably chastised for groping each other in the corridors of a school. But instead, the stones put the students…somewhere. Severus had not the least idea where, only that Poppy’s spells showed that they were still alive.

So that was a problem he had to solve. As was the students trying to pile into the formerly-hidden rooms.

And now, the bloody kingfisher. Who might also have been eaten by the stones, because when Severus and Minerva entered the corridor it had flown down, there was no sign of it.

Minerva threw up her hands. “I think it’s time to call in the Aurors, Severus,” she said, over the grumbling of the stones that included the words “disturbance” and “sex” and “evil.”

Severus grimaced. As loathe as he was to bring himself to the attention of Aurors once more, he had to admit she was right.

*

“Headmaster Snape. Professor McGonagall. Greetings to you both.”

Severus stared in silence at the man who had strode into his office and wondered if sex-obsessed, student-eating stones were really all that bad.

Harry Potter brushed soot off his robes and looked around as though waiting for the past Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ portraits to interrogate him. When it didn’t happen, he smiled briefly and turned back to Severus. His face was polite and utterly professional, which made Severus wonder what he was planning.

“I was briefed on the ritual that the students conducted to change the stones into what they are,” he said. “But I must admit that I didn’t understand it very well. Is there a way that I could talk to the students? Or to Professor Babbling?”

“Why would you understand it?” Severus snapped before he could stop himself. “Your expertise was never in Runes.”

He ignored the chiding way Albus’s portrait said his name, and the way Minerva sighed behind him, just keeping his gaze on Potter. If he was the only one who remembered the havoc that Potter could cause, very well. It just made him one of the few defenses that the school had.

“Headmaster?” Potter had the nerve to raise both his eyebrows with something like mischief lingering in the back of his expression. “As I remember it, your expertise was in Potions and not in running a school, and yet, I assume that you’ve learned new things since the end of the war. Trust that I have, too.”

“Trust you—”

“Severus!”

Both Albus and Minerva spoke at the same time, so Severus wasn’t sure whose voice was whose. He leaned back in his chair with a hiss, his arms folded, glaring at Potter. Potter only tilted his head a little and turned to speak with Minerva, who was promising to bring Bathsheda and the students along.

She swept out of the room, and Albus looked off to the side and hummed a little, which left Severus and Potter by themselves with no supervision. Severus thought this was the worst idea he’d ever heard. He stared at the wall and ignored the way that Potter cleared his throat.

“Headmaster?”

“What, boy?”

“Auror Potter, if you must.” Potter’s voice was a little cooler. “I don’t expect you to like working with me, but I expect you to do it. Do you know for sure that the students who have been trapped by the stones are still alive?”

Severus stared at him. “Would you not go after them if they were not?”

A half-smile twitched at Potter’s lips. “I’ll try to get them back no matter what. But while I’ll do anything for the living, I won’t put my people at as much risk for bodies.”

Severus considered that, then reluctantly nodded when he couldn’t see anything actually wrong with what Potter was saying. Potter smirked at him as if to say that he understood Severus’s thought processes and believed them laughable. Severus ignored that as much as possible.

“We’re sure they’re alive. Poppy’s spells can still find them, just not a way to get close to them. And occasionally the students who wander the corridor—” because even the Slytherins were dunderheads who found the muttering stones too fascinating to stay away from completely “—say that they can sometimes hear them calling and complaining to be let out.”

“Fascinating.”

Severus glared at Potter, but he seemed to have said the word sincerely, without an ulterior motivation. He tilted his head slightly, fringe falling into his eyes as he thought. Severus frowned at the man as something else occurred to him.

Potter no longer looked so much like Potter—that was, James. He should have, since he still had the glasses and the dark hair, and it wasn’t like growing up had done much to his facial structure. But somehow, his hair being longer and in a slightly different cut, and his eyes being more direct, made him look like Lily instead.

Severus buried that insight. It wasn’t even an insight. It was an irrelevant idea that was bothering him because he had nothing else to do at the moment, but wait for Minerva to bring back the students and Bathsheda.

Luckily, Minerva soon returned, herding them. Potter stood up and turned around, bowing his head a little. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I’d like you to tell me about the runic circles that you created. Please put as much detail as you can into it. I know that you’re intelligent, but I need a compressed description.”

Severus would have thought the students would react to such crispness with sulking, much the way they had when scolded or asked about their process for creating the runic circles in the past. But they perked up, maybe because Potter was speaking as if they were adults, and the leader, Marian Greengrass, stepped forwards.

“We just thought we could create a circle that would interact with the motions of our bodies the way that wand motions interact with our magic…”

Potter was listening with intense focus as Greengrass, soon joined by the others, poured out their story. Now and then Bathsheda cut in with some commentary on what was likely to happen as a result of the odd runic circles, but for the most part, she seemed lost in her own daydreams of the theoretical possibilities of such circles. Severus was just as relieved. If he, with his own patience for esoteric magical theory, had been driven mad by Bathsheda’s nonsense, he could only imagine what Potter’s reaction would have been.

“I see,” said Potter, when Greengrass’s explanation finally stumbled to a halt. Severus withheld a snort. I doubt he sees. “I think I know what happened.”

“How?” Severus demanded. “Not even our local Runes expert does.”

Potter smiled a little, glancing once at Bathsheda. “It’s possible that the professor does, but would find it hard to explain in words for anyone who doesn’t have her specialized knowledge,” he said. “But I’ve trained to recognize magical disasters and tipping points. It’s part of the work that Aurors have to undergo, after all, or we wouldn’t be very able in the field with actually countering those disasters.”

“How can we become Aurors?” Greengrass demanded. “Do we have to have an Outstanding in our NEWTS in all subjects? That’s what Mafalda Prewett said.”

“For one thing,” Potter said, his voice polite, “you have to commit to making sure that you understand the implications of any runic circle that you decide to put into practice.”

Greengrass wilted, put in her place for the first time since the beginning of this episode. Severus nodded stiffly. Potter was good for something. And he didn’t even gloat over Greengrass’s expression before he turned so that he was facing Minerva and Severus.

“There were runic circles drawn on the ground, but the most important factor is the intention that was floating in the air. Both the intention to have sex, and the intention to create a new kind of runic circle.” He ignored the giggles and snorts from the students at the word “sex,” which further raised Severus’s grudging respect for him. “That mingled with the magic of so many youngsters, and the magic of Hogwarts’s stones, and imbued these stones with their own intentions. Only, because the circles backfired, it created a distaste for desire in the stones, instead of a complementary intention to propagate it.”

“I must say that sounds very likely,” Minerva said.

Severus stared at Potter, and finally nodded. It did sound likely. “Not that that tells us how to release the trapped students from the stones,” he pointed out, because it didn’t, and Potter had only done half his job. Anyone could have hit on that explanation if allowed to think about it long enough, instead of dealing with day-to-day crises and chasing kingfishers around the place.

“I think I have a place to begin,” Potter said, standing. “I’ll need to create a reversed runic circle of my own. Instead of the intention to speak with a stone, I’ll need to focus on not speaking with a stone. And then reverse that intention with the help of the circle.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Severus quickly.

“I think you’d better take Bathsheda, too,” Minerva said. “She knows more about Runes than any of us.”

“Yes, but rune-intention interaction was never my specialty,” said Bathsheda, and smiled at Potter as if noticing him for the first time. Maybe she was, Severus thought. As far as he could remember, Potter had never taken Ancient Runes. “I think I’d be of the best service in building a protective circle around the one that you intend to construct, Auror Potter. That way, if something goes wrong, we don’t have a larger mess on our hands.”

“Or at least no larger than a single corridor and a wall stone.” Potter smiled at Bathsheda, and Severus scowled. So much respect for her, a professor he’d never even had in class and who had done nothing to save the brat’s bloody life, so little respect for Severus.

“I will still come with you,” Severus announced.

“I wouldn’t expect anything else of you, sir.”

Severus wondered what the bloody hell that was supposed to mean, along with the chuckle from Albus’s portrait, but of course he would never ask. He swept after Potter and out the door and down the moving staircase, determined to watch every step of building this runic circle. It would be just like Potter to multiply their disasters.

*

“The circles also opened these rooms?” Potter was staring at a cell-like space that had opened not far from the door into the Slytherin common room—not that Severus would reveal the common room to him if he had a choice.

“Yes. What, Potter, does that trouble your ingenious theory?”

Potter continued studying the new room for a few seconds, although Severus didn’t know why. There was no sign that the room had ever been used, bar a mark on the wall that could have been where manacles were fastened, or simply a natural scar in the stone.

Then he turned around.

Severus recoiled. Those eyes had gone cold in a way that had nothing to do with Lily or James, passion or pranking.

“I realize that you still carry old grudges about because they’re the only fire you have to warm you,” Potter said in a low voice. “And I have more important things to insist on than you addressing me by title if you won’t. But I’ll insist that you sit out of this investigation and Professor McGonagall take over if you spend more time sniping at me than helping me figure out what happened to the Hogwarts students. You remember them? The real victims here?”

As with the students, Potter’s words shouldn’t have struck so hard, but they did. Severus managed to jerk his head in a nod, and Potter smiled and seemed to let the matter truly drop.

“Good. How many of these rooms opened?”

“Twenty-four,” Severus said, and could only hope that his voice sounded as normal as Potter’s. How had the bloody man changed in the years that he’d been an Auror? “Twenty of them in the dungeons, two on the second floor, and one each on the third floor and the fifth.”

Potter tilted his head. “I see. And are all of them like this? Any bigger?”

“Most are this size or smaller.” Severus stared at the cell-room so as to avoid meeting Potter’s eyes. “However, the one on the third floor is big enough to have once been a ballroom or the like. And the one nearest but two to the Hufflepuff common room looks as though it might once have been a classroom.” He glanced at Potter as he recovered his courage. “And does it change your theory and the runic circle you’ll need to build?”

“Complicates it,” Potter murmured, ignoring the bait in such a way as to make Severus wish he hadn’t dangled it. “The students also had the intentions to create something new and reveal secrets, I think. That means that I’ll have to build a second runic circle after the one I use to make the stones reveal where they’re keeping the students. And that one will have to hold the intention to keep the rooms open, with the runes reversing it so that they’re closed off again.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Oh?”

This time, the impact of Potter’s eyes wasn’t unexpected. Severus shook his head. “We could use the space. We only need to certify that the rooms aren’t dangerous and won’t close up again suddenly.”

Potter nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll examine the space more closely, but I believe I’ll find that the rooms are secure and won’t close unless a separate runic circle is created to make them do so. The desire to reveal secrets and have sex were both embedded in the single runic circle the seventh-year dunderheads made, but I have no need to duplicate it.”

Severus blinked. “You use the word dunderheads as well?”

Potter’s eyes gleamed for a second. “I learned from the best.”

As he walked down the corridor, Severus followed him, frowning a little. That had sounded…humorous, instead of insulting. Severus had no idea why it would be, but he also couldn’t deny his own intuition that this was an offer of alliance, not attempting to put him down.

And Severus wasn’t foolish enough to reject that offer. Assuming that Potter had indeed grown up and wasn’t secretly making a mockery of him.

A few more tests might be in order, to make sure.

Chapter Text

“Have you finished drawing that runic circle, Potter?”

“Almost, Snape.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. His continued lack of a title for Potter hadn’t had an effect other than to get Potter to address him the same way, by surname. Severus could have said that he was older and deserved the respect, but Potter would have given him another of those glances he was—

Unprepared for. That was the best name for it.

Potter was currently crouched in front of the largest stones muttering about eating students, all of them close to the floor and supporting the walls above. He had sketched a basic runic circle in chalk and was adding more and more intricate runes to it with sweeps of his wand instead of chalk held in the hand, only pausing now and then to consult the book open beside him. Severus was reluctantly impressed.

Not that it would do Potter’s swollen head any good to show it, of course.

Severus decided that he might as well not show it, and asked, “Where did you learn so much about runes?”

“Part of my training.” Potter was leaning back on his heels, stretching his arms above his head currently. He’d removed his Auror robes and hung them on one of the muttering stones, apparently because the magic generated by working with the circle would make him too warm. Potter arched and stretched some more, and his blue shirt slipped up his chest.

Severus hastily looked away.

“To handle disasters, you said. Runes are part of that?”

He let his skepticism show in his voice, because that would probably do Potter some good, but Potter just turned around and looked at him. It wasn’t even the same kind of glance as before, and yet Severus found himself turning away, unable to hold it. Perhaps Potter hadn’t changed. Perhaps he was the one becoming soft, without being in the classroom to intimidate students into behaving.

“Handling disasters means knowing the best way to defuse them,” Potter said, mildly enough. “Maybe that means dueling someone or bringing down a wall with brute strength, but it could also mean conducting a ritual or, yes, drawing a runic circle. And it’s expected of Head Aurors to handle situations of all sorts with grace.”

“You’re not Head Auror.” Surely he wasn’t. Severus might have tried to avoid any news of Potter in the past few years, but even he couldn’t have missed everyone in the Ministry going mad at once.

And if he had, somehow, then he was sure Minerva would have told him. Probably right at the moment when he was sipping the hottest tea the house-elves served in the morning.

“No, but I want to be.” Potter shrugged and bent over his runic circle again, but this time, despite knowing what kind of concentration Runes needed, Severus couldn’t let this go.

“You never showed that kind of ambition in school.”

“Why should I have? At the time, the thing I wanted most was to survive Voldemort trying to kill me, and my professors weren’t always the most inspiring.”

Severus glared at his turned back. Potter didn’t even bother looking up, but something that might have been a chuckle sounded as he spun his wand, and the chalk lines began moving and turning about him again. This would be a double-layered circle, Severus saw, presumably with the runes that would include the desire to speak with a stone on the inside, and then the outer layer of runes reversing that desire. Or perhaps the other way around.

“I could have done something with you as a student if you’d had the slightest amount of ambition,” Severus couldn’t help muttering.

Potter proved that he knew both how to draw Runes and carry on a conversation at the same time, which wasn’t fair. “If I’d displayed that ambition, you would have done your best to downplay it. And if I’d followed the logical course of it, then you would have been too busy having a heart attack to benefit either one of us.”

“What?”

Potter gave him that smile that had mischief at the back of it again. “The Sorting Hat wanted me in Slytherin.”

“What?”

Potter was very definitely enjoying himself, now. “Surprised?”

“Yes, of course! You—” But Severus stopped. If he accused Potter of lying now, he would be the one who looked childish, and not Potter. No matter how childish Potter actually was.

“I didn’t want to be in Slytherin because I’d already met Hagrid, who told me Voldemort used to be there, and Draco Malfoy, who convinced me that I didn’t want to share a House with him.” Potter shrugged and stood, moving to the center of the runic circle he’d drawn to repeat some of his motions, but not all of them. Severus found himself watching Potter’s shoulders and hands instead of his wandwork. Well, he had never understood Runes all that well, anyway. “I think now that it was a childish decision, and I might have gained some benefits from being in Slytherin. But I can’t know, and I’m content with what I am.”

“I would not have had a heart attack if you were placed in Slytherin.”

“No?” Potter peered at him doubtfully, one green eye beneath that messy fringe Severus was convinced he spelled unruly on purpose.

“Nothing so quiet. An attack of apoplexy, perhaps.”

Potter laughed, and Severus started at his own reaction to the sound. Luckily, Potter had turned back to his circles and didn’t appear to notice.

That is because there is nothing to notice. Nothing that anyone needs to notice.

Severus frowned through his mental voice’s lack of conviction, and turned his attention back strictly to the runes that Potter had drawn on the floor, trying to interpret them as best he might.

*

“I think we’re ready to begin.”

Potter stepped back from the outer line of the larger circle he’d drawn, and nodded to Minerva, who stood on the stairs that led up from the dungeons. “Professor McGonagall, can you ask Professor Babbling if she’s completed the circle she was going to draw to shield us from the possible effects if this goes wrong?”

“Oh, call me, Minerva, lad,” Minerva said, with a faint smile. “You’ve earned the right. And yes, I’ll ask her.” She turned and sent her cat Patronus stalking up the stairs and towards Bathsheda’s position in the entrance hall.

“If you ask to call me Severus,” Severus mused without looking at Potter, “there will be bloodshed.”

“Oh, I would never ask you. Sir.”

Severus only had time to glare at him once before Bathsheda’s fluttering moth Patronus returned with her answer. “Ready and waiting. Tell Mr. Potter that I can feel the impact of his runic circles from here, and they’re magnificent work!”

Yes, everyone wants to praise bloody Potter, Severus thought. It’s not enough to praise him for things he did in the past. Now everyone will be calling him the Savior of Hogwarts or some such nonsense, too.

Potter showed no sign of excessive ego at the praise, though, Severus had to admit. He merely raised his arms above his head and drew in a deep breath, and then flicked his wand and his empty left hand down at the same time, saying something in a long, hissing voice that sounded like the names of many runes blended together.

The circles flared, and the light that came from them seemed to sting the muttering stones into savagery. Suddenly they were chattering and shouting at the tops of their probably nonexistent lungs, and they all sounded mad. Severus slammed his hands over his ears, wincing. He looked forward to the moment when they stopped.

But, wait. No. They couldn’t stop until Potter had asked them how to retrieve the students they’d imprisoned.

Potter shouted something over the clamor, but with his hands over his ears, Severus couldn’t make out what it was. He did see Minerva frown. And then the runic circles twisted and broke apart into sparks and ashes that leaped up into the air and rushed towards them in a burning wind—

And slammed against an invisible barrier. That would be Bathsheda’s circle, Severus supposed, the work of the actual competent Runes professor, protecting them.

The remnants of the circles disappeared. The voices of the stones did not. Severus saw Minerva swing her wand in a commanding gesture, but the stones kept yelling, and Potter’s mouth twitched hard.

Is he as angry as I am that his incompetence was proven? No, he could not possibly be as angry as I am.

Severus was opening his mouth to speak when Potter uttered an unmistakable sound, at least to Severus, even through the pressure of his hands. This was Parseltongue, and it made the stones fall silent as though they’d been destroyed.

Severus dropped his hands at once. “I had heard that you had lost that ability when you came back to life!” he snapped.

“Rumors of my Parseltongue’s death were greatly exaggerated.”

That just made Severus glare harder. At least he had something that he could say, though, something that Potter couldn’t refute or turn aside. “Your runic circles failed. And you were the best the Ministry could send us?”

“They failed because there’s another component here,” Potter said, and turned to Minerva, in a completely natural motion that meant Severus wasn’t in his line of sight at all. Severus would have hopped with rage if he’d thought it would help. “A third thing the Ravenclaws’ circle did beyond making the stones disapprove of teenagers kissing and opening secret rooms in Hogwarts. What is it?”

Minerva thinned her lips. Severus was displeased to see that it was the expression she made when she was thinking, not the one that would have showed she disapproved of the abrupt way Potter was speaking to her. “I can think of nothing. They had no other effect that I know of.”

“It might not have shown up at the same time,” Potter said, pacing a step forwards, his eyes dark and intent. “It might have seemed as though they weren’t linked at all. But there is something, something that I needed to put in the circle and which wasn’t there. What is it?”

“That bloody kingfisher!”

Severus at least had the satisfaction of seeing Potter blink and turn to look at him. “What kingfisher?”

“A student did manage to Transfigure himself into a kingfisher a week ago, and we haven’t managed to turn him back or catch him,” Minerva admitted. “But that seemed to be a simple classroom accident gone wrong. They were practicing to turn boxes into kingfishers. How could it connect to the runic circle?”

Potter smiled in a thin, superior way that Severus was equally offended by and startled to see looked a lot like his own. “The circle that the students wanted to cast was based on desire,” he said. “Both in the obvious sense and in the sense of intentions that I talked about before. I would wager that, if you spoke to this kingfisher student’s yearmates or friends, they would tell you that he wanted badly to find his Animagus form. And he might be an actual kingfisher Animagus, or the runic circle’s free-floating intention magic might simply have interacted with his intense desire to transform and ensured that he adopted the form that people were trying to Transfigure objects into. Either way, I need him back here. The runic circle I’ll draw has to be different if I’m trying to reverse two effects and not one.”

Severus scowled. That had made sense. He didn’t like it.

Potter startled him by winking, even as Minerva said, “We have tried, Auror Potter—”

“I must insist on you calling me Harry if you’re going to give me leave to use your first name, Minerva.”

Minerva simpered in a manner frankly unbecoming of her age and position. Severus was the one who said, as the adult in the situation, “We’ve tried to catch the damn kingfisher. It’s protected against everything from the Summoning Charm to reversed Transfiguration. Magic seems to slip off it.”

“Him, Severus.”

“It’s a component of the runic circle, Potter says. It’s an it.”

Potter interrupted with what sounded like a tired sigh in the back of her voice. “Then the first challenge is to find the bird and draw a circle to attract his attention. He was enabled to transform in the first place by wild runic magic. He’ll be drawn to it, I think.”

Minerva nodded. Severus once again couldn’t find fault with the plan or the explanation, which made him wonder if he was going soft in his old age.

Then he saw the way that Potter glanced at him as if for approval, and the slightly wary way his head was tilted, and smirked. No. Definitely not.

*

“Here, birdie birdie birdie.”

The words made Severus wrinkle his nose, but oddly enough, it did seem to be working. Not two minutes after Potter had finished drawing a quick runic circle on the floor of the entrance hall and had begun his inane call, there was a flash of bright blue feathers from overhead, and the kingfisher came diving towards them.

Minerva gripped Severus’s arm, as if she assumed that he would draw his wand and blast the bird to pieces. Severus ignored her. Instead, he watched the soft, coaxing expression on Potter’s face.

Although it probably wasn’t needed. Potter’s theory appeared to have been correct. The kingfisher was indeed drawn towards the circle. It ignored Potter entirely, not to mention Severus and Minerva crouched behind the Grand Staircase, as it landed on the floor and walked straight into the circle.

A heat shimmer of verdant magic soared up from the circle and wrapped around the kingfisher. One moment it was a bird; the next it was a little jade statuette. Potter stepped forwards, smudged the chalk of the circle with a boot, and then walked into the circle and picked up the figurine to drop into a pocket.

“It won’t hurt him,” he said calmly, in response to Minerva’s horrified gaze. “He won’t remember it. And it’s a better solution than trying to carry a struggling, squirming live creature back to the corridors with the right stones.”

Severus really did not know what he was going to do with all these obnoxious feelings of approval lately.

*

“And you have all that you need for this second attempt, Mr. Potter? You are sure it will work?”

Minerva had been speaking in a clipped voice since Potter had transformed their escaped kingfisher into a statue. Now the statue sat in the exact center of the triple runic circle that Potter had finally finished drawing in the middle of the dungeon corridor. Severus couldn’t fault his dedication, at least. He had completed this third exercise of powerful magic in an hour without slowing or stopping or complaining.

And he had annoyed Minerva, which Severus always found entertaining.

“Yes, it should.” Potter looked up, the line of his throat something Severus had to drag his eyes away from. No one else was going to know about that, either. “I missed that there had been another interaction between the runes and desire, another kindling of free-floating intention. And I’m sure the first circle failed because we’re talking about three effects, only two of which we want to reverse. Not more. Unless either of you would like to tell me about anything else?”

Potter had an intense gaze when he wanted to. Severus crossed it with his own, as with a sword, and Potter smiled a little instead of looking away or down. That was a reaction Severus had only ever encountered with Albus. And Potter managed to do it without Albus’s irritating twinkling.

“No. Nothing else.” Minerva hesitated, and then sighed. “I know the boy’s caused trouble, but he is still a student.”

“I understand. So are the ones the stones trapped. Don’t worry. I’m going to free all of them.”

Severus frowned. Perhaps the most uncomfortable revelation of all was how much he believed Potter, how genuinely reassuring his voice was.

This time, Potter didn’t bother speaking the names of the runes. He went straight to Parseltongue, the hisses leaping and crackling among the stones. Their low, moaning voices came back, and joined with the language of serpents in such a way that they might even transform, for Severus, his primary association with Parseltongue, which was as the tongue that the Dark Lord had spoken to his disgusting familiar.

The familiar who had almost killed him.

Severus pushed the thought away so violently it made his head spin, and watched as the magic soared up out of the middle of the circle, this time as vibrantly blue as a real kingfisher’s feathers. It hit the statuette, and ran around it in circles.

To Severus’s surprise, the figurine didn’t immediately transform, either into a bird or a boy. Instead, the stones reacted first, wrenching slowly open, drawing back like impossibly heavy curtains on either side of a stage. And bundled bodies rolled out of them and into the middle of the corridor, bumping to a harsh stop.

Minerva immediately stepped forwards with her drawn wand, and cast diagnostic spells that all professors picked up sooner or later. A second later, she glanced at Severus and nodded. Severus nodded back. He could see for himself that the students were breathing, and none had any life-threatening injuries.

If they had been able to get the students back themselves, and make the walls shut up about their grievances, Severus would have considered asking Potter to leave the stones the way they were. Maybe it would lead to fewer students breaking curfew.

He glanced back when there was a sharp snapping sound, and saw the statuette breaking down. The flecks of jade fell off it, veins of marble seemed to cascade through it, and it abruptly surged in size. And then there was a Ravenclaw student crouched dazedly in the middle of the circle, looking around and panting for breath.

Minerva immediately cast the same diagnostics on him. Then she went over and knelt down beside him, speaking softly, presumably to reassure herself that he still retained his human mind.

I don’t know how she’ll be able to tell, Severus thought, and saw, as he glanced back, that the stones had sealed themselves.

“Mr. Potter!”

Potter was down on one knee when Severus turned around. He snarled as he hurried over. “Of course you would exhaust yourself now and die on my watch,” he snapped, grabbing Potter’s shoulders.

Potter laughed, a weak, wavering, faint sound that terrified Severus far more than he would ever admit. “Don’t be silly, sir. I’m just tired. I need to rest a little, and then I can return to the Ministry.”

“You’re going to the infirmary, Auror Potter,” Severus said, pleased with the startled look on Potter’s face as he waved his wand and conjured a stretcher.

“I don’t need—”

Even more pleasing was the utter shock that surprise melted into when Severus Stunned Potter so that he could get him on the stretcher. He ignored Minerva’s stern clucking at him, especially since she was soon distracted by the rescued students anyway. This was obviously for the greater good.

*

“Madam Pomfrey tells me you’re the one I have to thank for my Stunner headache.”

Severus looked up from the pile of paperwork he’d brought to the hospital wing and blinked innocently. Potter scowled at him from his bed. Poppy was taking no chances, and had taken Potter’s wand away and used a few of the milder charms that would stick him to the bed. Potter could have freed himself easily, doubtless, in ordinary circumstances, but those ordinary circumstances didn’t include exhausting his magic half to death.

“Yes,” Severus said.

Potter looked at him a little longer. He seemed to be waiting for shame or remorse. Severus didn’t know why he expected those, and finally Potter leaned back against his pillows and shook his head.

And did the last thing Severus had expected, himself. He laughed.

Severus gave him a steady stare, certain there was mockery here somewhere. This was James Potter’s son. But Potter gave him another one of those looks that said he was also Lily’s, and murmured, “Thanks. There aren’t many people who can stand up to me, anymore, and not many who would dare try. They all expect me to know best and save the day every time. And I was completely delirious with exhaustion. I really did think I could rest a little and stand up and just go back to the office to start writing the report. I know now that was delusional.”

Severus slowly laid aside the paperwork. He stared at Potter, and Potter stared back, his smile gradually diminishing.

“What?” Potter asked. “I won’t tell anyone that you had a moment of compassion, if you don’t want. I’m sure Minerva won’t think of it that way.”

“You’ve changed,” Severus said, and clenched his jaw at the sound of what he knew was almost jealousy in his voice. He sounded pathetic.

“So have you.”

“I have not. If you were privy to the contents of my thoughts—”

“But you managed to work with me, and didn’t go storming off when I returned some of the insults.” Potter shrugged, and then grimaced as one of the charms that Poppy had laid on him pulled the motion up short. “Once, you never would have managed that without flying into a rage. It might not be as obvious to you, because you don’t interact with a lot of your former students, and I imagine that Albus and Minerva haven’t changed that much about how they relate to you. But yes, you’ve changed.” Potter smiled then, teasingly enough to stall Severus’s brain. “I’m afraid that you have to live with the indignity of being a better man than you used to be.”

“You know the sacrifices I made,” Severus said, and his voice shook a little. He stopped speaking at once.

Potter leaned forwards, giving him that intense gaze. Severus didn’t falter, but it was a near thing.

“I know. And I know that you’ve finally been allowed the time and effort to grow beyond them, not to always live in their shadow.”

Severus blinked hard. Then he said, “I suppose you would understand that better than most. You’ve done your own growing up.”

Potter abruptly winked at him, and said in a low, sultry tone, “I was wondering if you would notice.”

Severus choked on air. When he could speak—which took a shorter time than it might have, because Potter was watching him with a mischievous expression that said he might feel revenged for the Stunner—Severus snapped, “Mr. Potter, that is highly inappropriate.”

“Why? We’re not teacher and student anymore. We’re not even professional colleagues. It’s not like I would be coming back to Hogwarts to work under you on a regular basis.” Potter tilted his head the other way, and he no longer looked like James or Lily at all, just himself. “I mean, not that I’m opposed to a certain degree of under…”

Severus resisted the choke this time. “I am—much older than you! Your mother is a loss I still mourn. Your father was my tormenter!”

“And you were mine,” Potter countered, not sounding shaken. “I meant what I said about it being so rare that someone challenges me. If you could do that, and I know you’d be good at it, then you’re already the most attractive person I’ve met in years.”

“I thought,” Severus said, and stopped because he refused to stutter. He went on when he had had enough of Potter watching him patiently. “I thought you had—something with Miss Weasley.”

Potter grinned. “For a little while. But we both discovered that we were gay and announced it to each other the same day, can you believe that? Ginny’s much happier with her girlfriend on the Harpies team, and I’ll be much happier once I find a man who can challenge me. In every possible way.”

Severus tightened his hands. This declaration was something that he had never anticipated, maddening for a man who had survived for so many years by understanding where his enemies were coming from before they struck, and did not know how to face.

But Potter was staring at him, and was Severus really going to let a Potter get the best of him?

He nodded. “We can try. We will speak when you are no longer bound to this bed.” He stood in a flourish of robes.

“Oh, you prefer to do your own binding?”

Severus did not like the way his face turned red, but he did like the dark tinge to Potter’s eyes, and the way that he reached for Severus for a moment before the charms yanked his hand back.

That was a good look on him, in fact. The way that he had tried and then failed to touch Severus, and the way that his chest was beginning to move faster as he breathed.

“I might,” Severus said, startled by the change in his own voice, and the stirring in his chest. “But you’ll need to prove yourself worthy of it. If I’m the one challenging you, I’d like to see a little challenge in return, not just someone who rolls over the moment I glare at him.”

Potter grinned, all teeth. “I think I can arrange that.”

“See that you do, Auror Potter,” Severus said. “And perhaps someday, I shall grant you permission to call me by my first name.”

He turned and walked out of the hospital wing, his breath already coming faster than he wanted it to. Some of it was the old fear, that he had made a move that would only result in pain, and he should back off, hide, turn away, defend himself with caustic words to keep the other person from hurting him or taking advantage of his weakness.

But a surprisingly large component of his emotion was desire. And a bit of it was soaring exhilaration, at the idea of a challenge that he might meet.

A challenge that might change him further.

Perhaps we shall both learn what we are made of.

The End.