Make Me More Daring Than Devout

by potionpen

Summary:

Albus already knew the problem with yes-men, but he gently reigns a people who bow.

As a professor, Severus watched Albus learn to indulgently ignore him.
As a student, he calculates he has one chance to make an impression.

Notes:

Title from Prayer by Louis Untermeyer

Notes:
The epistolary I promised happens chronologically before this but goes better with the next post.
I think I've been failing to thank ZiggyCas for beta-ing so far in this series. All the good cheese to Ziggy, and some of the sympathy to Tolwyn.

Warning: Italics, parentheticals, and run-on paragraphs. This last is 100% deliberate on Severus's part. He wouldn't let me break them up for fear that Albus might get a word in.

ACTUALFACTS CONTENT WARNING: discussions of suicide and the generalized as well as Hogwarts-specific hellscape of adolescence. I have done my best with Albus ‘Same age as Freud’* Dumbledore’s views on suicide, but I will not be giving him contemporary opinions that he wouldn’t have. If exposure to his desperate need for mental health education is going to be a problem but you still want to see Severus shred his work style and philosophical assumptions, the paragraph to skip is right after Albus gasps, “Severus!”
Also, I can’t stress enough how much Severus is knowingly and intentionally avoiding his own performance as a teacher while criticizing other people. Or what a weird place Albus is at on the pessimist-optimist spectrum. Or how much Severus does not actually want to talk about his feelings or trauma, even though no one including me even suggested that he fling open the saloon doors and have this conversation.

* She originally said he was 150. This gels better with his behaviour and his position, I had more respect for the artist known as Robert Galbraith back then, before she'd decided to go public as a trashosaur, and she’s not paying me to change my headcanon when she Pottermores or whatever. Albus is ~150 and Narcissa is Severus's age. So there.

Chapter 1: Out of the box

“Severus, my dear boy, do come in,” said Albus.  He was bracing for the most unpleasant encounter this office had seen since he’d last had to decide whether to expel Sirius Black, or perhaps even since the death of Myrtle Warren.  The boy had every right to be upset.  Not only had his classmates’ treatment of him been appalling intrinsically, but their timing had been especially cruel.  The performance of a sensitive young wizard like Severus would have been shaken by public humiliation in the middle of his exams even if he hadn’t had his life and citizenship endangered (quite recently) by the same group.

Albus was angry and disappointed himself.  This went well beyond ‘boys will be boys.’  It was an abuse of his lenience and reflected poorly on the character of children he’d thought very promising.  At this point in the term, unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do that would have an impact without being a gross overreaction.  

So his smile was, while professional, on the sympathetic and sombre side, with no trace of fun or mischief in his eyes.  As far as he could make out, Severus had had no part in his friends’ interesting display at breakfast. Nor had Fawkes given any warning of malicious intent; Albus expected no divergence from the lad’s usual display of accusatory shouting.  He was prepared to hear and honour and outwait it, as usual, until Severus had tired himself out enough to understand that circumstances put limits on justice and that there were even limits on what was understandable even under the banner of self-defence.

But no sooner had the door closed than Severus, face very calm and movements deliberate, had pointed his wand at Albus’s face.

“Severus,” Albus said kindly, his hand under the desk sliding to his wand, “you are not a killer.”

“And yet,” Severus remarked, steady, stern, and disappointed in him, “your first assumption is that I mean to become one.”

Albus looked at the pale circle of wand-tip in front of him (Severus’s stance was very efficient; he’d been presented with the smallest possible target, though the feet were solid on the floor, not poised to dance back).  Reed was a wand for truth-seekers and protectors, for leaders who changed the world rather than be humbled by it, for scholars and healers.  Reed wands also tended to find wizards who were impulsive and impatient and never quite grew up, or who became embittered when their pride and charisma provoked more hostility than liking.  “Then what do you intend?” he asked politely.  He was ready to shield, now.

“No curse and no harm.  Merely a safety precaution,” Severus said.  There was no playfulness or threat or even anger in his face or voice.  He was as flat as a barrister under Veritaserum, but he gave Albus no chance to reply.  Wandwork so tight that Albus couldn’t even follow the motion, as if moving only his quill fingers and not his elbow or wrist, he cast, “Tabula adamantium.”

Then he put his wand away, sat without being invited, and gave the soft, four-fingered snap that summoned the Hogwarts elves.  Students were not meant to be able to do that, but it worked.  “Good afternoon, Jinky.  A pot of green tea with basil, mint, and lemon, please—a light hand with the basil, if you’d be so good; the goal is floral complexity, not pesto.  And whatever atrocious tooth-rotting nonsense the Headmaster usually has with his stale, bulk-ordered Tetley Original when he doesn’t have ginger newts, which I personally would not pair with basil.”

“Yes, Mas—” Jinky began, then looked confused.  He directed a questioning gaze to Albus who, intrigued, nodded graciously.

The elf popped back in with the tea and a plate of lemon shortbread, only to be informed that people who used finely granulated sugar in shortbread were ignoramuses who had presumably never met with a properly textured biscuit in their tragic lives. 

When Jinky had gone away again (chastened but afire with new baking purpose), Albus said comfortably, “Let me attempt to summarize.  You wish me to know that you are not afraid of me and do not wish me to be afraid of you, that you know me moderately well, and that Hogwarts regards you as a benevolent authority.”

“Sodding Gryffindors,” Severus said, emphatically but still with no trace of emotion.  “An Acceptable summary, but in fact I know you very well and also wish you to know that it is possible to have good tea while remaining within budget.  There are several greenhouses and a forest quite nearby, you know.”

“Do you indeed,” he replied brightly, testing the tea before taking a real sip.  It was, actually, very nice.  “Well, my boy, we have indeed had several fascinating conversations over the past few years.”

“You think you would be worst-judged for who you’ve loved,” Severus said, still completely expressionless, “and your deepest fear is that a child may have died at your wand, but if you had the wisdom of a concussed bowtruckle, what you would have learned is that when a child has been hurt, sitting back with your thumb up your arse to see how they do without help and healing only results in more hurt down the road.”

“We return to the matter of yesterday,” Albus observed, letting his cheer fall.  It was perhaps not out of reach of a young Slytherin with connections in the darker families to know these things.  He wouldn’t put it past Abraxas Malfoy to use his son and a louder-mouthed boy to inform Albus that Malfoy thought he’d uncovered blackmail-worthy information.  Best not to let the boy know the blow had fallen.

“No,” Severus said flatly.  “I’m still talking about Miss Dumbledore and about Tom Riddle.”

Albus went still, and the boy’s lips curved like a sardonic schoolteacher whose most obstreperous student had failed an exam by one question.  “Severus.  How do you know that name?”

“Wrong question,” Severus replied, sitting back in his chair, a relaxed serpentine uncoiling with no trace of the frantic small dog he usually resembled.  “I’ll answer the right ones.  I know you very well because I’ve worked with you in two capacities for most of my adult life.  I am who you take me to be and yet have indeed had an adult life.  I am willing to answer pre-arranged questions under Veritaserum for two reasons.”  Looking with sardonic meaning at Albus, he hooked his thumbs around each other and curled his fingers around them, flared his hands into the sign of the phoenix, then curled them back to form the egg again.

Not stopping to acknowledge Albus’s intrigued eyebrows (a still-young corner of his mind was tempted to speculation, but he had not, in the end, become an Unspeakable; best to leave explorations of time magics to the experts), he ploughed on, just as pedantically as if he wasn’t cracking a violent Bludger into every future and every certainty.  “First: it took less than twelve hours for the timeline to be knocked off its course even without my intentional interference, simply because I was well enough this morning that my friends felt free to do what they liked instead of sitting on me all day to keep me off the Astronomy tower.”

“What does the Astronomy tower have to do—”

“It’s what people jump off, you ante-Victorian nightmare; you are not running Plucky Polly Pepper’s Academy For Lithping Widdle Gowden-Haiwed Angelkins and Fresh-Faced Young Manly Chaps Who Unironically Say Golly.  Every human is a walking scream from the onset of puberty at least until their prefrontal cortexes are developed enough to let them realize they aren’t being intensely judged by every other human in visual range at every single moment.  Especially the quiet ones.  It’s exhausting even when their lives aren’t objectively appalling.  Try to keep up.”

“Severus!” 

Death was merely a part of life, a step into the unknown.  It happened to everyone and Albus had never seen any point in fearing it.  Giving up on life was another matter entirely.  He didn’t have the religious disapproval for it that the muggles of his childhood had felt, but he had lost all his family young, one way or another, mostly to death, and sometimes the pain of it came back fresh even now.  Severus had never struck him as particularly selfless, happy, or optimistic, but he wasn’t an orphan or alone in the world.  Albus knew him better than most students, and though the boy was self-centred in the way of the hurt and the young, Albus was sure he cared for his mother and Miss Evans, at least, deeply.  Too deeply to rip a hole into their lives, surely, if he understood at all that they loved him as well.  Eileen had been a reserved child, for a Gryffindor, but surely she at least showed her brilliant (if difficult) son her pride in him, and Miss Evans was unabashedly affectionate.  “You can’t mean that you—”

“WHICH MEANS,” Severus bulldozed on in defiance of manners, horror, and sympathy, refusing to allow this most personal of questions, “that time paradoxes are an irrelevance, as matters have already diverged from my memory.  This carries the further implication that I am under no obligation to attempt to recreate and relive events I have experienced.  Thank Christ, Merlin, Hecate, and anyone else you care to think of; on this point I have more than enough gratitude to go ‘round.  Said point, in turn, means that—practically speaking, if not literally—I have no knowledge of future events to share, so it is safe for the universe for me to speak truth to you.  Second: you’re not going to remember a damn thing about this conversation if I don’t allow it, so speaking truth to you is also safe for me.” 

 He considered, subsiding like a cauldron on full boil collapsing suddenly into a serene simmer, and calmly qualified himself,  “Reasonably safe.  You told me once that perhaps I proved we Sort too soon, and as there wasn’t space in that conversation and then we were quite busy I never got the chance to reply properly.  Allow me to take this opportunity to do so now, lest the possibility that I’ve been insufficiently risk-averse give you the wrong idea: you may take that thestral dung and sit on a morningstar.  One’s House isn’t their DNA, it’s merely a culture.”

Albus allowed nine-tenths of his brain to run in circles screaming (four-tenths in terror, five-tenths in what the children these days might call swotty excitement, or possibly not) while the final bit calmly operated his mouth as he took a sip of tea and noted, “The spell you used translates to ‘adamantine tablet,’ I believe?  Inspired by the term ‘tabula rasa’?  I didn’t feel anything.”  He knew the meaning of adamant and blank slates, at least, even if most of what he knew about DNA was that muggle scientists had been quite excited about it at one point.

“Quite,” Severus said.  For just a flicker of a moment he looked like Filius did when someone missed a pun, and then it was gone.  “Your ability to record events into intermediate-term memory is currently under my control.  If, at the conclusion of this conversation, I believe it safe for you to recall what we discussed, you will.  If I believe your knowledge will be a danger to either of us, my friends, my House, Hogwarts, or Britain, etc., I will close the spell without allowing you to retain the memories and then use the time-turner I nicked from Phil Lovegood, (who has, as I understand it, been allowed to use the damn thing for the last two years because neither you nor Professor McGonagall understands that bollocksing about with developing brains is bad for them; does Filius even know about this?  I thought better of him, but I don’t see how you could give one of his students a completely mental schedule like that under his nose), taking other precautions which should eliminate the practical risk of paradox even if the Unspeakables would likely disapprove.  I have not, of course, been so irresponsible as to test the effects on a sapient creature of letting the spell linger indefinitely.”

The final threat on this Gordian knot of a declaration was delivered levelly, with bland, direct eye contact.

“We do seem to still be having the conversation,” Albus suggested thoughtfully, meaning that no Severus from the (immediate) future had so far (insofar as he could tell) come back to erase it.  

Despite his tone, he was doing his best to put aside most of his thinking until later.  Best to focus on the immediate present, for now.  Severus had been clear that the ripple effect was already beginning, and if Albus could earn his trust there would be time to think about how much of the boy’s memory would even matter, let alone how to act on it.

“Loops could exist,” Severus shrugged philosophically.  “I’m a brewer, not an Unspeakable, and having just had a concussion healed I’m not in a mood to take on further headaches.  You should be more convinced by the fact that I have stated—persuasively, I trust—that I know you well, and that I thought speaking openly with you to be worth the several serious risks I have taken to do it.”

Albus hummed meditatively.  “Would you allow me to use legilimency, if, as you say, your knowledge is safe for me to have?”

“No,” Severus said flatly.  “Last year, at your premeditated request—I say request, but you bloody badgered me about it for months and it wasn’t as if I’d had any sleep for the year before that, either—I hastened the effects of a lethal curse on you to keep you out of the hands of Riddle’s most dedicated and sadistic nutjob and friends, who you had allowed into the school because you think you’re as accomplished a trapdoor spider as James Moriarty and you like elaborate plans that give your enemies room to fuck you over when you hope they’ll be noble according to your definition even when their families are hostage to their behaviour.”

Not for the first time in this conversation or the fiftieth time this year, Albus forebore to suggest that the boy pause for breath on occasion.  It would only result in heightened volume, and besides, participation in Filius’s choir had given him a regrettably admirable lung capacity.

Severus did in fact take a breath, which he seemed to need more to calm himself than for physiological reasons, and went on.  “Neither of us needs to go through that again, and you currently only deserve about a hundredth of how angry I am with you, direct exposure to which might well make even your abnormally equable amygdala explode.”

“I shouldn’t care to compare myself to Professor Moriarty at all,” Albus pointed out, frowning.  He felt a little hurt, partly because Severus was being presumptuous and biting, but not insolent or even really uncivil (apart from the copious swearing and by the standards of angry Ravenclaws).  It made his opinions harder to brush off. 

Albus had expected to face frustration free from any sense of responsibility and despair that hurt to see, especially since there wasn’t anything he could do to convince a child who had never learned to be pleasant that the world would ever want him when Albus knew, sadly, that it wouldn’t.  Instead, a wizard of sense, passion, daring, discipline and (dare he say) humour was talking to him not like a colleague or subordinate, but like a friend who’d been let down when it mattered but still cared enough to be honest about it.  

Even Gellert had never spoken to him like a true peer.  Gellert had, he’d realized later, been peremptory when not manipulative; these days nearly everyone else treated Albus with admiration, or with hateful contempt veiled in courtesy or even unctuousness.  Even most of his professors (except for Filius, and Minerva on occasion, usually when she was tipsy) were, even at their most familiar, very clearly and respectfully conscious that he was their employer.  It was odd to speak to someone who claimed to have killed him—especially someone who treated it like their grievance—but death was hardly the worst thing that could happen to one.  The prospect of a merciful death in some theoretical future was far too unimportant to distract from the love beating furiously out at him from under the cool face and sharp words and (mostly) contained ire.

“I don’t mean dedicated villainy in the name of capitalism,” Severus said, waving a dismissive adolescent hand with newly graceful fingers.  It was a good thing the boy had hair like a peat-soaked mop and a face like a particularly pugnacious and hungry rhinoceros.  Albus hoped that young Miss Evans could see past it, as well as being a good friend.  “I mean that your confidence in your strategic genius and ability to predict how people will react is… well, I suppose it helps that you’re a telepath who may have morals but couldn’t find ethics in the dictionary—”

“My dear Severus—!”

“No, I mean it.  They’re not the same thing, and they both matter.  Muggles have codes and oversight for professionals who need to take care to do no harm in their lines of work.  You have possibly more influence on children directly and on the future of the nation indirectly than anyone else, and you just take each decision as it comes and do what you feel is right, in a global sense of ‘right,’ without having to answer to anyone.  That’s a recipe for disaster no matter who’s doing the cooking.”

“I’m glad you know I try to do what’s right,” he said, bemused.  “But surely you know that it matters who is, as you say, doing the cooking.”

“For pity’s sake,” Severus said, his cool expression cracking into visible annoyance.  Albus took that as a small victory in a mad world.  “Of course personality, motive, and intelligence have their effects.  But when you don’t have to answer ‘why is it right, could anything be more right, who is it right for’ before you act, someone in your position can still do world-breaking amounts of damage even if you don’t accept that each person is their own universe.  And here we return again to the question of the Riddle, whose damage has scarcely begun.”

“I’m afraid he was quite set into his own mould, even as a child,” Albus said firmly.

“Yes, you were afraid, ” Severus agreed ruthlessly.  “But you didn’t know.  You just believed, and acted on that belief.    You still don’t know.  You only know that the firm discipline and naked distrust you used with him didn’t prevent the outcome you feared.  You have no idea whether they moderated it, had no important effect, or made it worse.  The reason I am taking these risks (when, to be perfectly honest with you, I am fully capable of flying under your radar for the next two years and having you out of power by 1984, please note that I choose this date only because you need to read the bloody book) is that I do know that your methods made things worse with Riddle, and are continuing to do so with children who are worlds more malleable and empathetic and idealistic than ever he was.  And I know that that isn’t what you want, and I know it isn’t necessary.  You don’t have to give up a fourth of your charges to misery, cruelty, and madness.  You can do better, and all you have to do, Gryffindor, is not give up.”

This was extremely hard to take.  If Severus was right, Albus would have to take on a burden of guilt so heavy that he could only blindly feel the shape of it in this moment.  But if Severus was right, turning from the knowledge and the responsibility would make him a politician like any other.  

He’d always believed that it was better for the world that he should hold too much power than let it be shared among those who hadn’t proven themselves trustworthy and incorruptible; he’d already made his great mistake.  He’d learned from it, and knew how to hold himself to account, knew what tempted him and (with all due respect to poor old Oscar) how to resist temptation.  

If that wasn’t enough to stop him from making another great mistake, then he couldn’t know it wasn’t enough and yet go on thinking his hold on the reins was justified.  If Severus was right, he could only change course or resign in favour of younger, less experienced, and in most cases less intelligent witches and wizards.  Their mistakes would be stupid and venal but, at least, predictable, and so their damage might at least be easier to control, even from a position of no formal power.

Albus let the tea and biscuits do their true magic of giving him time to think while he sipped and nibbled.  Severus finally drank his own cup, poured them both more (which was impertinent of him, but Albus never minded impertinence when it meant well), and didn’t push.  Which was, quite possibly, the best argument for his not being an actual teenager that he’d made yet.

Finally, Albus put his cup down and said, “You say that I believed, but you know.”  He raised an eyebrow in question.

“Let me preface my answer with this: Horace is yours,” Severus assured him. “Not more than his own, but he’s one of yours and will never be anyone else’s even if he someday chooses to be no one’s.  You needn’t fear his motives.”

“I am delighted to hear it,” Albus replied, letting his face, if not his grave tone, gently ask what point Severus was trying to make.

Severus inclined his head, acknowledging the unspoken question.  “But, as I believe you know, he loses more than half of any Slytherin dormitory that has at least one child in it with a parent Riddle influenced to pureblood supremacy, and most of those to Riddle directly.  In my time as Head of Slytherin—don’t bother to act surprised; you heard what Jinky said.  In all that time, once the students Horace allowed to openly despise me had left school, I never lost more than one or two a year.  Seldom even one, except in years when hostilities were active and the pressure on them was intense.  Every one of those had parents who they loved and who made them feel they’d be dependent financially forever and were true believers or deeply in Riddle’s power and in real danger because of it.”

This was an astonishing claim, and Albus let himself show it.  “Would you say that again under Veritaserum?”

“I have already said that I would,” Severus said cordially, eyes cold, making it sound remarkably like a coarse and improper suggestion.

This wasn’t precisely what he’d said, but Albus was willing to take it as a yes for the moment.  “What did you do?”  It couldn’t just be having faith in them.  This Severus was much that yesterday’s hadn’t been, but he was in many ways recognizably himself.  As he’d said earlier, Albus had endured many ‘fascinating’ (i.e.: interminable) disciplinary teas with the boy.  Even maturation had its limits.

“Looked the fuck after them,” Severus snarled, putting his empty teacup down with an incongruously dainty wrist and a precise click so loud that Albus was surprised the cup didn’t shatter.

“The power of love?” Albus asked with a knowing smile.  The world was opening with possibility quite rapidly as he got over the surprise and his instinctive skepticism.  He had known that there was no future for a sour, bitter, lad who was all brains and claws with no friendliness, family, or looks to ease his way, but there were traces of that lad in the speech of this wizard who Albus thought he might, once the shock wore off, rather like, and who effortlessly treated Albus Dumbledore like an equal who could be trusted to take his rough edges without offence.  If Albus had been wrong about this boy’s ability to become a person worth knowing, worth helping, worth learning from, how else could the children surprise him?

“I swear to God, Albus,” Severus informed him from between the gritted teeth of a student who should have earned a weekend’s detention for the familiarity, “someday I am going to rip that addled-gaffer beard off your face, run it through a spinning wheel, and go fishing for your spleen.  Power by itself is not helpful; this is my entire point.  The source of the power doesn’t matter if you fuck up how you wield it, are you paying attention.”

“But I’m sure you already have my share of spleen, Severus,” Albus replied cheerfully, suddenly enjoying himself immensely as the (presumably younger) wizard’s conviction made him feel, for the first time in a long time, more hopeful than determined.  Even so late in a very long life, he might still have room and time to grow, and perhaps do more for the world than ever before.

Severus hurled a piece of shortbread at him like chalk and glowered in irritation (but not anger, or threat, or calculation) as he laughed.  

Thoughtfully dipping it into his tea, he said, “Matters of philosophical concern aside—”

“If by that you mean matters of avalanching systemic catastrophe.”

“If you like.”

“I don’t.  Have I been insufficiently clear?”

“Not at all,” Albus said cheerfully, “but the details may have to wait.  I must ask how you came to be here, my boy.”

“I suppose you must, but I have no explanation.”

They looked at one another for what felt like nearly a minute.  Eventually Albus made an inquisitive face.  

Severus shrugged, mostly matter of fact but with a soupçon of humanizing helplessness creasing the edges of his eyes. “I really don’t.  I was in an intense and unfortunate moment, and found myself in a previous one just as unpleasant.  I did nothing to cause it, and know of nothing anyone else did that could have caused it.  A great deal of powerful and irresponsible magic was flying around, but to the best of my knowledge none of it was time magic.”

“A mystery!” Albus exclaimed, for all the world as though he was delighted to leave it at that.

“If I were forced at wandpoint to form a hypothesis,” Severus said, eying him sourly, for all the world as though he knew Albus too well to believe it, “it would be that the ghost of Helga Hufflepuff saw that Riddle was about to win the universe and wasn’t above taking advantage of willing blood spilled on a ley node.”

Albus would have liked to think that Hogwarts could defend herself in mysterious ways, though the most evidence of it he’d ever seen was the moving of the stairways, or perhaps the occasional suit of armour moving undirected.  Still… “Why Helga Hufflepuff?  Surely if a Slytherin—”

“Are you joking or have you never met a badger?  They’re bloody ruthless and they don’t care who sees.  They aren’t on good terms with subtlety and they don’t make contingency plans, they just go at it and hope.  A Slytherin wouldn’t just,” he gestured helplessly, “lob someone backwards in time.  All sorts could go wrong.”

Albus, who despite his present good mood felt rather as if he’d spent the last ten minutes being psychically battered by Hagrid wielding a sledgehammer, eyed him dubiously.

“I have no explanation,” Severus said grumpily, “and if you mislike my hypothesis you’re perfectly free to put on a pair of fairy wings and go dig your own out of a well full of molasses on the midnight of a full moon at the peak of Mount Olympus.”

Albus tried, not with any great fervour, to hide a smile.  “A saying from your home, Severus?”

“No,” Severus explained, scowling eyebrows unbending a bit, “it’s just that I’ve spent the last year trying to moderate the excesses of a pair of crucio-happy bridge trolls who are just clever enough to notice when they’re being insulted while everyone else hated me even more than usual since, as previously noted, you bullied me into assisting your suicide, so I’ve built up rather a backlog.”

“...On Hogwarts grounds.”

“I don’t want to talk about it and I’ve no intention of letting your manebrained ideas steer us to the point where it happens again, so since I’ve already mentioned your truly breathtaking plan to let the school be invaded there’s no use in your asking further questions.”

Albus turned over the clouded hints Severus had given him in his mind.  Finally, soberly, he asked, “Severus, how much thanks do I owe you?”

The boy cringed away.  “I don’t know,” he said crossly.  “As I said, I think we were losing.”

“Nevertheless.”

Severus’s shoulders hunched up, making him look more like a fifth-year than he had since he’d stormed in.  Then he forced them down, recovering his composed posture.  “If whatever you’ve taken from what I’ve said gives you any confidence in my judgment and intentions, then I have a suggestion with regard to your present dilemma.”

“Certainly enough confidence to listen to a suggestion,” Albus agreed.  “I am strongly inclined to believe you, my boy, but I’m sure you would castigate me were I to forget that you haven’t spoken under truth magics yet.”

“I certainly would,” he agreed, eyebrows going indignant again.

Albus smiled and gestured for him to go on.

Severus changed his posture again, going more formal.  His eyes chilled over, not to hostility but to the cool neutrality he’d come in with.  “You were going to remove Lupin from his post as a prefect for ineptitude, giving it instead to Potter because his behaviour during the Shrieking Shack incident makes you think he can learn to live up to it and because it’s become clear to you that he is that group’s leader and there’s no point in trying to put one of the others above him.  And you were going to assign them detention for the rest of term, and myself a week’s detention (which amounts to the same thing) for taking defensive action you considered to be alarmingly aggressive.”

“I assume you have objections,” Albus said carefully.  This was more familiar ground, although he now had some hopes that savage shouting might yet be avoided.  He suspected that a truly professional demeanour might be beyond his new companion, but it seemed that an attempt was being made.

“Several.  First, giving Potter the badge would be a reward and he would see it as such.  For him to believe you were rewarding only a previous behaviour rather than approving of him generally would be too much nuance to expect of a fifth-year Gryffindor.  Minerva doesn’t train them to understand delayed feedback.  Tell me I’m wrong.”

The ground was delightfully unfamiliar again, and not just because of the casual name-dropping: Albus had expected much more emphasis on what James did and did not deserve, and on James’s particular personality traits.  “I did, of course, intend to explain matters.”

“I don’t believe you’re prepared to be brutal enough to convey to someone with his degree of self-confidence, who has received so little correction from his parents, that his behaviour has crossed a line that matters,” Severus said, almost kindly.  “You would explain, and he would go away under the impression that it was unmannerly of him to attack his schoolmates in public and without an excuse.”

“Would, or did?” Albus asked, gentling his voice. 

Severus’s mouth tightened and he ignored the question: answer enough.  “My second objection is that while I expect you think it would be kind of you to remove Lupin from the untenable position his badge has placed him in—that of responsibility for the behaviour of those who have the most power over him after yourself—by giving it to one of them you would seem to blame him for a situation that no one could manage.  Don’t mistake me,” he added, raising a cool eyebrow.  “Lupin has all the leadership skills of bubble-and-squeak.  His talent is in guiding from a supportive role; he should never have been within a quidditch field of a position of authority.  But replacing him with Potter or Black, when it’s their behaviour he failed to control—that’s unwarranted cruelty, sir.  He’d be a pariah with no magical future if his lycanthropy got out, they accepted him instead of revealing him, and so he loves them.  What on earth did you expect of him.”

“He is a good influence,” Albus argued. Although the portraits were only tasked to inform him when student misbehaviour ran the risk of causing permanent injury, they did gossip.  He gathered from their reactions to young Remus and his friends that the number of detentions they had collectively gathered was eclipsed only by the number of bad ideas the lad had talked them out of.

“What influence he has is soft influence.  He has no authority, he knows it, and they know it.  They know he means the best for them, so they listen; he’s utterly theirs, so they can trust him.  But when you put him in charge, then when he argues against him he’s speaking for you.  It makes him an outsider; it makes them feel he’s seeking your approval more than their good. And since the argument comes from authority rather than their friend, they are no longer inclined to listen.  As for the detentions—need I even say it?  A week at the end of term is meaningless.  You’ll be lucky if they even show up; they know there’ll be no consequences if they don’t.  They’ll learn nothing.  You know it.”

“I can’t expel them, Severus,” he said gravely.  “What they did to you yesterday was cruel—don’t think I think it was a harmless prank.”

Severus was silent.

“But it’s not an expelling offence.  You’ll say it should be, especially after Sirius Black put your life at risk last month, and perhaps it should.  But if you understand Remus Lupin’s position in the matter of his friends, you must understand where he stands in the eyes of the Ministry, if they but knew it.”

“I do,” Severus said, very coolly.  “And I know where Black stands in the eyes of his family, and I know that you know that, too.  Grow an imagination, Albus.”

Albus blinked, considered taking offence, decided to be curious instead, and blinked again.  “In what respect, my boy?”

“You have choices other than ‘token slap on the wrist’ and ‘destroy their entire futures without reprieve.’  For pity’s sake.  Physical labour and writing lines aren’t the only things you can do to make an impression on a student.  They’ll ignore you or even take themselves for martyrs.  The only thing you can do to teach them they were wrong is to lower their standing.”

“Their popularity isn’t up to me, Severus,” Albus protested.

“Bollocks,” Severus scoffed, disappointed in him again.  “What makes Black and Potter popular?”

Albus blinked.  “Being likeable, I should think.”

“Only they aren’t.  They have no actual friends outside their in-group,” Severus pointed out.  “Ben Goldstein is likeable.  Lupin is likeable.  Potter and Black are popular.  It’s not the same thing.”

“By all means, enlighten me,” Albus invited, asparkle with curiosity.  He’d heard Horace say things that he now realized danced around this idea, but Horace never explained anything.

Severus began ticking points off on fingers that were still too long for his growing body.  “They’re physically attractive and charismatic.  They have powerful families, money, and the approval of authority as demonstrated by their good marks and never getting into trouble they can’t laugh off.  They’ve been allowed to believe, and to convince others, that what they do is good because they are in the House of good people.  As the leaders of their friend group and since their friend group comprises the entirety of male Gryffindors in their year, they are in control of any task, honour, or responsibility which traditionally is awarded or assigned to at least one male of their year in every House.  They perform well and gain points for their House, which is considered the good one by the authorities and therefore also by the student body at large, in official and highly popular school activities.  Over which of these matters do you have authority, whether or not you’ve thus far chosen to exercise it?”

“I can’t help but suppose you may have ordered your points with emphasis and intention, Severus,” Albus mentioned, thoughtful but amused.

“I may not be the subtlest Slytherin to ever flare a hood and spit in your eye,” Severus said comfortably, relaxing into a sly, thin little smile as he poured them each another cup, “but I’m certainly one of the beakiest, and I can learn even from a pink toad.”

“...What on earth do—”

“Let’s never find out.”

Chapter 2: The fallout

Notes:

Happy Solstice!

As noted, some chapters in this arc will be in bullet-point format, and this is one of them. Thanks to those of you who speculated! I enjoyed reading your ideas. ^_^
I hope this is enjoyable and satisfying, even if it's not the same as a prose post.

• Instead of veritaserum Albus used a time-limited truth geas and a spell that would cause a liar to glow, because he (correctly) thought that a Severus who was in control of his tongue would give shorter answers. 
  
  Glowing did happen, but it was the white of information withheld and the orange of truths used oddly rather than the bold red of outright lies.  Besides, when Severus stated who he was, when he was born, his experiential age, whether Tom had his loyalty, and who had it instead (this was a bit of an eccentric list, but Hogwarts and Lily Evans were both on it even if Severus enjoyed the fifteen seconds of sardonic silence after Albus suggested himself far too much) there was no glowing at all, and that was all Albus really needed to know for now.

• Albus then accepted a time-unlimited geas of discretion, and was accordingly allowed to keep his memories but not to learn the memory spell.  This geas was the same kind that Severus had accepted after learning about Remus’s illness; someone determined could have found ways to get around it without dire consequences, but its uncomfortable warnings were good protection against alcohol, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness, nearsighted beetles, and so on.
  
  
• He never exactly got an admission that Severus had come to him more as a friend who missed him and had had no friendly conversations in at least eight months than as a Slytherin who wanted an ally.  However, he had tellingly little difficulty with securing an agreement to at-least-fortnightly teas when school resumed in autumn, and from then on when he tried to pat Severus on the arm or shoulder (neither were huggers) he never actually got physically bitten.
  
  Not that Severus had ever physically bitten Albus before.  But the same could not be said for poor Rufus Scrimgeour, who had as a fourth-year made the mistake of smugly walking away from a firstie half his size before young Snape felt that the argument was over.

• Albus met with Severus again once before school let out to ask him if he thought he should be a prefect himself the following year.  His answer was a twenty-minute lecture on Slytherin internal politics and why every Tory starting with Margaret Thatcher (Albus didn’t know who this was) should die in a fire but since they wouldn’t oblige everyone else was going to have to just work around them, preceded by an emphatic, “Are you out of your desiccated mind?!” 
  
  Since Severus was angry with someone else (Horace) for once, Albus found it both enlightening and rather soothing.  Slytherin’s male prefect’s badge and Quidditch captaincy both went to Evan Rosier, as Slughorn had always meant them to.  As everyone with two neurons to rub together had known he would, Severus did more than half of Rosier’s work for him, just as Minerva did for Albus.

• Remus’s prefect badge was given to a half-blooded, muggle-raised Gryffindor boy a year older who was taking exactly as many NEWTS as he needed to qualify for Auror training in case he couldn’t get a Quidditch job.  Chattaway had been heard to explain that one of them was Muggle Studies because it would look good on his CV, as Aurors had to interact with muggles more than many, and the homework was a joke.  It was therefore considered that he could spare the time for the duties, and if he wasn’t as good with the younger kids as his roommate who’d been a prefect since their fifth year, he also didn’t use them as guinea pigs or shove them out of his way on the stairs and was willing to help them find their classrooms and so on once he’d been explicitly told that it was now his job.
  
  Remus considered this an absolute win.  The badge had put him in an impossible position, which was now relieved, and he was allowed to just be a friend again.  Now that no one was trying to make him boss them around, Sirius and James were even willing to admit that maybe he was right that it was time to put some of that Maraudery genius into thinking about whether they wanted to start a product line or a cartography company or all become Aurors or curse-breakers or what since their last chance to make changes to their NEWT classes would be really soon now, James!
  
  At least, Sirius was willing to admit it for the week and a half before his other problems kicked in.

• Lily did not consider replacing Remus with a boy she didn't know well and who was in his NEWT year to be a win.  Fortunately for her, Severus seemed to be stressing out about his schoolwork less than usual and was able to help her out with the paperwork and the patrolling.  Oddly, the teachers didn't seem to mind him helping with the patrols—or at least, pretended not to notice him.  Or possibly didn't notice him.  He swore he hadn't enchanted his clothes, but these days he blended into shadows more than he should with his untannable face and his shoes never made any noise anymore.  Nobody had the nerve to stop him coming to prefect meetings, either. 
  
  Lily had been worried about unproductive shouting when Sev first showed up, but actually meetings got really efficient with him around, even though Chattaway needed as much training-up as the new fifth-year prefects. Sev's new gimlet glare tended to cut through silly arguments.  Narcissa Black had a talent for bringing Sev and the Ravenclaws back on track when they got side-tracked by interesting points in their homework.  And when Sev started frothing at the mouth over House tensions and people following the Marauders' example and pulling mean pranks, Rosier would wrap a peaceful hand around his wrist and ask two or three questions and then Sev's shoulders would relax and Rosier would go back to snoring on him and the kids in question would inexplicably never do anything like that again.
  
  Asked how this was accomplished, Sev just shrugged helplessly at her and said, "I told you you should be in Slytherin."

• The Gryffindor Quidditch team lost a Chaser and both Beaters the following year.  This was a net long-term gain for the House, despite James, Sirius, and Peter all being very good in their roles.  Because everyone agreed that Black and Potter needed more occupation than their schoolwork provided, Gryffindor assembled a reserve team for the first time in fifteen years.  This meant that seventh-year players weren’t replaced by the completely untrained. 
  
  Because everyone could watch reserve practice and understand that Potter, Black, and Pettegrew’s absence was the reason that Gryffindor’s performance was not up to snuff, there was a certain amount of resentment over what they’d cost the House on a mean-spirited whim.  Suddenly no one was mad at Lily for not thinking they were charming and funny, which was rather a relief.  She had no compunctions about reminding everyone why when they started to forget.

Notes:

Fight me, Walker's Shortbread, you overhyped factory-cardboard. Turbinado sugar and good butter; it's not hard.

Next:
In 1976a, teenaged Severus got a summer job working for Luke Malfoy's dad. While it was a good job, it also left him on a fast track to an awful fate: teaching CHILDREN.

In 1976b, 70,000 year old Severus* sent this script back to the author with a big red stamp reading, "Quality Control: Inspected: REJECTED."

* Hey, you try living on tea, nutrition potions, no sleep, and your nerves for three years. See how good you look.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Ouroboros: The Cobra Coils
• Part 19 of Chew on this