Work Text:
From the perspective of Severus Snape
January 1991, Hogwarts.
He heard her footsteps outside in the corridor in front of his office at ten minutes to eight.
The castle was always particularly quiet at that hour—the sort of silence that made every sound, every gust of wind sweeping through the corridors and every drop of water dripping from the ceilings onto the stone floor seem several times louder. But it was the sound of rustling robes, of shoes on stone, and the slight shift in the air that he had trained himself to notice, to catalogue and to utilise. A spy's habits never truly die.
The footsteps were hesitant, yet brisk. Back and forth, ten steps in one direction, ten in the other. Then they paused briefly—and began again.
She was nervous, then. Good—she should be. After the foolish thing she had done in his last lesson, having had the audacity to cheat in his class—it was the least he expected.
The footsteps paused briefly, then resumed. The sound inevitably reminded him of a moment shortly after the Christmas holidays—the footsteps of someone else. These, however, were purposeful and unwavering. The footsteps of a woman who wouldn't be dismissed by him so easily.
Lucinda had turned up at his office without any warning, knocked firmly and entered without hesitation. She had stepped determinedly up to his desk. Standing before him with impeccable poise, she had her hands clasped in front of her and her chin raised slightly.
He had simply looked at her expectantly, without saying a word.
"Severus," she had began, "I don't have much time for unnecessary detours, so I'll get straight to the point."
She had her gaze fixed on him—those bright, almost translucent eyes that gave her such intensity that they would have made the blood run cold in the veins of many grown man. He, however, had remained unfazed.
"You're making my daughter's life a misery."
He had studied her for a moment, letting his gaze wander over her immaculate robes, over her light blonde hair, which she had tied back into a severe bun—a hairstyle that lent her face an even harsher look. Typical of a Ministry employee of her rank, he had thought with contempt. Had she really come to see him specifically to tell him that?
He had raised an eyebrow. "Your daughter is quite capable of making her life a misery without my help."
He shook off the memory.
He glanced at his watch. Thirty seconds to eight, the footsteps stopped and there was silence. Then, at eight o'clock precisely to the second, he heard a knock.
It was quiet, yet firm. He allowed himself to acknowledge this fact for a moment. If there was one thing Severus Snape hated, it was tardiness. Some students were either late, hoping to minimise the time they spent with him, or were far too eager and arrived too early, keen to appear eager—he saw right through it immediately. Precision—that was his philosophy. And that was what he had taught her years ago.
He waited longer han necessary. He wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging her, not for such a simple task as being on time. He gave himself a moment longer; it wasn't just about the detention and the task he was going to set her—he wanted to teach her a lesson. He waited a moment longer. Three, two—
"Enter."
He didn't look up from the essays he was marking, when the door opened, and closed with a soft click.
Lucinda had taken a step towards him.
"You're humiliating her in front of her classmates," she had said quietly.
"I set her standards, which she should certainly be able to meet," he had said softly. "If she finds that humiliating, perhaps she should think about why that might be."
"You're treating her unfairly."
He had snorted. "Unfairly?" he had said, his voice dripping with contempt. "I treat her just like any other of my students." He had paused, then gestured towards his door. "Most parents care about their children. At least some of them do. Did you see a queue of raging parents outside my office?"
"No," she said sharply, without taking her eyes off him, "because most parents don't know how you treat their children. Most parents trust the teachers at Hogwarts not to make their children cry over mistakes they can't possibly know any better."
His eyes had narrowed. "All parents think they're not most parents. They all are. Some of them just have the audacity."
A clearing of the throat brought him back to the present.
He paused for a moment. Without looking up, he waved his wand and conjured a small table and a chair in front of his desk.
"Sit."
He heard the chair being pulled forward, and the sound of her robes rustling told him that she had obeyed his instructions.
Then he looked up and met her gaze directly. Her posture was straight—too straight—and he could see the tension in her shoulders. Yet she held his gaze without batting an eyelid. And although he had known her for years now, there was something unsettling about her gaze, as if she could see right through him—even though he knew that was impossible.
Her refusal to be intimidated reminded him of her mother. She was one of the few—perhaps the only one—who could hold his gaze without flinching—and had done so ever since the day he first met her. He had admitted to himself that this was one of the qualities that made her bearable to him.
Lucinda had tilted her head, her pale green eyes boring into his dark ones.
"But I'm not most parents, am I? Most parents don't know who you are, and why you do what you do. But I do. You've reversed the roles, haven't you, Severus? Does that give you any satisfaction?"
He hadn't answered.
"Homeschool your daughter if you don't like this school's methods," he had said instead. His gaze had dragged over her. "You still have the... competence, don't you?"
Lucinda's lips had curled into a joyless smile. "Oh, I could homeschool her. I could teach her everything she needs to know and more. In several languages, if I wanted. But I want her to have a normal school experience."
The girl in front of him looked pale. Her light brown curls were tied back in a messy ponytail, with a few strands having come loose and been carelessly tucked behind her ears, whilst others stuck out in all directions. But he noticed something else—she had lost weight.
The thought came to him unexpectedly. Of course, he had noticed it before: her occasional absence from the great hall at mealtimes, the way she had pick at her food when she did turn up. Her robes—which, judging from what he knew about her mother, must have been tailored—hung more loosely than they had at the start of the school year.
He had noted it, catalogued it, and told himself it was none of his concern.
The candlelight made the shadows under her eyes appear even darker and emphasised her sunken cheeks. He noticed the slight tremor in her hands, which she had placed on the table in front of her—the sort of tremor that comes from not eating enough and not getting enough sleep.
He had watched her sitting alone, far away from her classmates, isolating herself and retreating into corners in the hope of going unnoticed. He had noticed the way she would flinch whenever someone spoke too loudly or touched her unexpectedly.
Was this really the sort of school experience Lucinda had imagined for her daughter?
What he couldn't deny though, was the fact that she was one of his best students—her potions were usually flawless, better than those of Celeste Flint and Adrian Rosier, the students from his own house. And that was precisely what made him so angry: her carelessness.
But he would never admit it.
He knew, of course, that she was struggling with her homework. He had read her essays—they were either incomplete or astonishingly precise, never mediocre. Proof that she understood the subject better than most other students—and yet was too lazy to make more of an effort, wasting her potential instead.
He would never, however, have expected her to end up having to serve detention with him. Not for something foolish as using a self writing quill. But it wasn't the use of the quill alone that had made him so angry, but the fact that she hadn't even bothered to check the essay before handing it in.
Just like her father, he thought. That would have been just like him—buying his way out of trouble, cheating his way to good marks, and being too stupid to realise his mistakes.
The thought hit him like a blow—and filled him with furious rage.
"Most children survive my lessons without complaining," he had told Lucinda.
"Most children leave your classroom in tears," had been her reply.
"Most children don't run straight to their parents and send them in first."
"Do you enjoy tormenting children?"
He admitted to himself that he had indeed taken pleasure in humiliating her in front of the whole class when he had discovered the quill.
Finally, he rose from his chair, walked round his desk, stopped in front of her and loomed over her. He wanted an explanation for her sheer thoughtlessness.
"You expect me to believe," he began coolly, "that you acquired a self-writing quill from Zonko’s and thought this an appropriate solution to your academic shortcomings?"
He narrowed his eyes. "Or is this meant to be amusing?"
She shook her head. "No, sir."
"So, was it sheer... stupidity?"
She pressed her lips together and her jaw tensed—but she held his gaze. Her face twitched slightly, and he knew he had hit a nerve.
"I didn't buy it from Zonko’s," she said quietly. "I made them myself."
He blinked. Was it possible that a first-year could cast a spell like that? It wasn't impossible—but it was unlikely. Still…
"Don't lie to me."
"I'm not lying," she said firmly, without taking her eyes off him, and her voice grew louder, almost stubborn. "I enchanted it myself."
"A first-year," he said slowly, "claiming to have produced a writing implement. Do not insult my intelligence."
He had spent years teaching her how to lie convincingly, weaning her off the little habits that always gave her away. These included the pause she made before speaking, the way she briefly looked away as if she had to concoct a lie, and the almost imperceptible tension in her jaw. And she had quickly learnt how to play the part. And yet he was certain she was telling the truth.He himself had witnessed how she had instinctively used a Disillusionment Charm to sneak up on others when she was barely seven years. Even though it wasn't perfect and he had spotted it quickly—it was still better than that of many an adult. She had already shown what she was capable of.
And yet he wanted her to feel that he was the one holding the strings.
"Try again."
He saw her jaw tense and a flush rise to her cheeks
"But I did," she began. "Intention, that's the first principle of charms, right? So, I modified it with each try—"
The speed at which she spoke increased; she was rambling, and Severus was barely listening to her anymore.
"—and I felt tired talking so much, so I tried to link it more directly—"
She was now speaking so fast that he wondered if she was even taking a breath.
"— I thought, if I connected it directly to my mind, and write down my thoughts instead of having to phrase them—"
That sentence eventually snapped him out of his lethargy.
"—but it was a disaster, it started writing down everything I said, if only I had a filter for—"
"You have—what?!" he said louder than he had intended.
She flinched. "Yes?"
"You have linked your mind" he repeated tonelessly, "to your quill?"
He stared at her. This foolish child. This reckless and thoughtless child. She had clearly understood the theory, the mechanisms of how to adapt a spell… And yet she had completely ignored one crucial detail. She had no idea what she had done, or what she had risked. Fury welled up inside him, the urge to grab her by her shoulders and shake her, to shout at her and ask her what on earth she had been thinking.
But he didn't move.
She nodded uncertainly. "Salazar Slytherin—known for being a born Legilimens—enchanted the Sorting Hat, didn’t he?"
He froze; his eyes narrowed to slits, and he leaned over her.
Had she just compared herself to Slytherin? That was just like her, just like her father. Just as arrogant and obnoxious as he was. Just as reckless and thoughtless and—
"An extraordinary child," Albus Dumbledore's words echoed in his mind.
"Her name is Elizabeth. You might like to see her for yourself," the old, white-haired wizard had said to him, a smile playing on his lips, when he had sent Severus to Lucinda under some other pretext.
Severus hadn't cared; why should he take an interest in a child? Why should he take an interest in that child—his child—of all people?
But then he had seen it for himself. How those dark green eyes met his gaze for the first time and she tried to invade his mind. She had looked at him with an intensity, much like she was doing now, that still unsettled him.
She was a born Legilimens—born with a gift she didn't have the faintest idea how to control her gift or keep out of other people's minds. He quickly realised that Dumbledore had sent him to her mother under false premises—to arouse his curiosity and fascination, and ultimately to persuade him to teach her.
Yet the thought of teaching a seven-year-old child—and in a subject as difficult to master as Occlumency, at that; he would rather have gone back to being a spy under the Dark Lord's scrutiny.
Nevertheless, she had stirred something within him that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Because she reminded him of something he didn't want to name; he had met that feeling with nothing but aversion and disgust. And still he had finally resolved to do it—not out of compassion, but because this child fascinated him. A fascination he would never admit to himself. He dismissed it as a purely academic interest—as a challenge to pass on his knowledge to a rarity. It was easier to regard her as an experiment than to admit that something about her wouldn't let him go.
She had turned up at his office on her own via the floo. He had expected her to fidget, play around and be restless—just like any other child her age. But she stood still, upright, her hands clasped in front of her, and listened as he spoke. She was polite and focused. Almost too quiet for a seven-year-old.
Then, for the first time, he had entered her mind.
He had expected many things. He didn't know exactly what—perhaps the scattered, simple thoughts of a child: fragments of memories, fleeting emotions, the little fears and joys of a seven-year-old.
Instead, he had found chaos.
Her mind was like a storm. Thoughts leapt from one to the next so quickly that he could barely keep up—memories overlapped, emotions blended together, fragments of conversations, images, fears, all woven into a knot that was impossible to untangle.
But what had made him pause was the frustration. The desperate need to understand why everything felt so loud, why other people's emotions weighed on her like a physical burden. He saw a room shaken by a storm—a red-haired boy hurled against the wall and sliding unconscious to the floor. He had sensed her fear of herself. Heard her own whispered words: "I killed him. I killed him."
And beneath that—a kind of grief. The raw, unresolved grief of a child for a father she barely knew, yet still missed.
He had withdrawn almost immediately—it was too much. Too fast. Too intense.
He had looked at her—this small, quiet, impossibly calm girl who was looking back at him with a gentle smile—and wondered how she could appear so composed on the outside whilst her inner world resembled a battlefield.
Little by little, he had taught her to shut her mind off, to protect it from intruders, from those who had realised that the girl might know too much. Eventually, she had managed it.
But she hadn't done it the way he had. He organised his thoughts neatly, categorised them, locked them away one by one—each memory in its own box, each emotion behind its own façade. Her thoughts, on the other hand, were a vast web, a tapestry of memories, feelings and associations that could not be forced into separate compartments. Nothing was isolated but everything was interconnected. It wasn't about creating a perfect illusion—not about deceiving a Legilimens like the Dark Lord. It was simply a matter of sealing off her mind.
And she had surprised him—she eventually managed to conceal larger areas of her mind whilst keeping smaller ones open—guiding intruders along the web and revealing a single memory when necessary. Not an illusion that would fool an experienced Legilimens—but good enough to protect her for the time being.
And now she sat before him—having put everything at risk. She is reckless, careless, thoughtless. She is just—
"A sensitive child," Dumbledore had insisted. "And possessing extraordinary power. More power than she knows how to use. And if she doesn't learn to control it, that power will consume her. Or make her dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands. I have already failed once to guide a gifted child onto the right path. I cannot afford to make the same mistake twice."
Severus' mouth had tightened. "So it is now my task to repair your errors?"
Dumbledore hadn't reacted to the sharp untertone in his voice. "Her instruction is divided. Occlumency will remain your responsibility. The regulation of her emotional and instinctive magical output is being handled elsewhere."
He towered over her even more, the rage within him threatening to boil over. "I have endured years of teaching you the craft required to close your mind," he said so quietly it was little more than a whisper, "only for you to carelessly bind it to a... quill?"
Her gaze dropped, as if she had realised for the first time the gravity of her foolishness. Her fingers clung lightly to the edge of the table.
Did she understand what she had done? And now she was to ciscard it—to cheat.
With a flick of his wrist, he levitated a parchment, a quill, an inkpot and one of the thick volumes from his bookshelf onto her table—Poisons and Antidotes: An Encyclopaedia—where it landed with a dull thud, causing her to flinch briefly.
"Now," he said coolly. "Write an essay detailing the procedure to be followed if one accidentally ingested Weedosoros. The immediate steps, the necessary counteragents, and the reasoning behind each choice. By your own hand. You will remain here until it is completed."
She blinked.
"Sir?" she said. "I don't think I've—"
"You are not here to demonstrate your ignorance," he interrupted. "YYou are here to demonstrate that you are capable of something other than reckless self-sabotage. Begin."
She pressed her lips together. "Yes, sir."
He wasn't expecting much. He didn't reckon she would actually manage to solve the problem. He had given her a task that would make even older students break out in a sweat—a poison from the fourth year's curriculum, the antidote to which wasn't even covered. Most students wouldn't even have bothered to start.
He watched her as she flipped through the pages, her lips pressed tightly together, found the section—and paused.
A satisfied smile touched his lips. The book contained little more than the name of the poison and a vague warning about convulsions. No antidotes, no treatment instructions, no prescription—nothing that would help her. She had nothing—only her wits.
He leaned back, arms crossed, and watched as she stiffened, stared at the page and then gazed off into the fire for a full ten minutes. The candles flickered, casting long shadows across her face—and in that dim light, her light brown curls looked almost black. Her eyes, which were usually a dark green, seemed darker. In that moment, she looked just like him.
She'll give up, he thought. She'll prove that she's nothing more than—
"Do you still see nothing in her but her father?" he heard Lucinda's voice in his head.
"There's not much else to see."
"You know that's not true."
The rage had overcome him so suddenly that he had jumped up so abruptly that his chair had been knocked over and fallen to the floor with a loud bang. "It was you who ran off with him! You! With him! Why Black, of all people?!"
She flinched as if he had struck her.
"Is that why," she had whispered, "you're punishing her? Because you're still angry with me?"
"You knew who he was—" He had broken off, trying to compose himself; his hands were shaken with rage. "You knew what he'd done to me! You knew, and yet you chose him!"
Her expression had changed—and she had lowered her head remorsefully.
"Because I… I thought… I thought he had changed." She had hesitated. "I truly thought he would understand me, in a way no one else could. He was the only one who found it just as suffocating to be part of the society we were both born into—who hated it just as much as I did."
She had paused briefly, then looked him straight in the eye. "I had always thought that we both understood each other, Severus. That we knew each other. But you saw nothing in me but the name Malfoy. And in you, I saw only myself. And in doing so, I overlooked you and your own truth. And I'm terribly sorry for that."
She had raised her gaze and looked him in the eyes. "So punish me for it."
Then her gaze had hardened once more. "But that doesn't give you the right to treat Betty the way you do. She isn't responsible for my mistakes."
"She's careless," he had replied, his hands still shaking. "I haven't spent years teaching her just so she can remain mediocre. She needs to be challenged."
"No, Severus. She needs to be seen. She needs to know that someone believes in her."
"She's not my responsibility," he had hissed.
"She's the most gifted student you've ever had—and you know it. She needs guidance, not humiliation."
He hadn't taken his gaze off her. Then, suddenly, her face lit up. She pulled the book towards her, shut it and glanced at the title. Then she reopened it and began to flip through the pages. When she found an entry, she skimmed it; her eyes followed her finger as she traced the lines. A smile appeared on her lips. She reached for the quill, dipped it into the inkpot—and began to write.
After a while, he stood up, stepped behind her and saw the chaos on the parchment: lines crossed out everywhere, arrows linking one line to the previous one, a jumble of thoughts. Still, she kept writing.
Then a thought crept into his mind—Black would have given up long ago. He wouldn't have even tried in the first place.
He returned to his desk.
He watched her more closely. How she would pause, deep in thought, then carry on writing. Every now and then she would stop, shake out her wrist, then carry on. And so time passed—minute by minute, hour by hour. He continued marking essays, but his gaze kept wandering back to the girl.
Almost ninety minutes later, he noticed her quill had stopped scratching on the paper. He could feel her gaze on him, but he didn't look up.
"That was so much easier, sir" she said suddenly—and her voice sounded far too cheerful. "Almost pleasant. I think I work better under pressure."
He pretended not to have heard her and continued correcting the essay in front of him, unfazed.
"Perhaps," she added, "I should get detention with you more often."
Just as he was about to scribble a correction in the corner of the parchment, he froze. His quill faltered. Slowly, he looked up—and met her gaze.
A smile spread across her lips. She looked at him with the same expression she had when she first met him. She had reached out her hand towards him. "I can make it weaker. Your pain."
"You care about her, dont you?" Lucinda had said. "And you hate it. Because she's Sirius' child."
What a ridiculous accusation. He set down his quill.
"Get out."
He watched her as she jumped to her feet, hurried to the door and disappeared behind it without another glance back.
"Break her. Break her, and you'll get to know a side of me you don't know. I survived my father. I survived losing everyone I loved in a single night, and I got up every morning to raise my daughter on my own. She's the only good thing I've ever done. Break her, Severus. I've got nothing left to lose."
She had looked at him with icy eyes, and a shiver had involuntarily run down his spine.
The door clicked shut with a soft click. He stared at the very same spot where Lucinda had been standing weeks ago just before she had left.
"We were thirteen years old, and you swore to me—we swore to each other—that we'd never become like our fathers. Do you remember? That you wouldn't become the sort of man children fear. That you'd never use your authority to belittle others. And look at you now."
Her gaze had taken on an almost pitying expression.
"You've become him, Severus."
Then the door had slammed shut.
Furiously, he had hurled the stacks of parchments off his desk. How dare she? What did she know? She hadn't been there. She hadn't seen what he had been through. She knew nothing of his experiences or his pain. She didn't know what it was like to be punished for what he was, for the way he was. She had no right to judge him. It had taken him hours to calm down.
He stared into the void for quite a while, at the spot where the girl had been sitting just a moment before, then waved his wand to summon the essay.
He unrolled the parchment and began to read. It was utter chaos—a jumble of scattered and disorganised thoughts, yet correct, nonetheless. Not only had she mentioned Golpalott's third law, but she had also applied it; she had explained in detail what to do in the case of a blended poison—a blended poison couldn't be cured by simply mixing the individual antidotes together; that the true antidote had to be greater than the sum of its parts— and what to do if that weren't the case. She had concluded that a poison needed a counteragent—something that would bind to the poison, neutralise it or flush it from the body before it could cause lasting damage. In an urgent case, a bezoar could be used as a last option against most poisons.
He looked over at the pile of parchments he had just marked—the essays written by his fourth years. None of them had thought to apply Golpalott's Law. None had understood that it wasn't only about the poison, but about the logic behind it. They had simply copied down what they had found in books.
But she had managed it—and he found it hard to accept that she had exceeded his expectations. And she had wasted her talent on a shortcut—on a stupid, reckless attempt to cheat.
He pushed the thought aside. It wasn't his fault. She was careless, reckless, thoughtless—just like her father. He pushed her because she needed it. Because otherwise she would faile. He did it for her own good.
That was the difference between him and his father.