Snivellus and the Head Girl by SeverusSempra
Chapter Notes: The end of sixth year
Chapter 16 Hail and Farewell
The day after Severus and Lily’s collective release from the hospital wing, Severus had found himself suddenly hurled unceremoniously into of one of the castle’s many suits of armour, courtesy of some unknown assailant. By the time he had picked himself up, the person responsible, and their wand, had disappeared. Given the crowds in the hallway, it could have been anyone; the wit behind the “knight in shining armour” joke, however, argued in favor of Potter.
The jealousy behind it did, also. Apparently their rivalry, which had lain dormant for a few months, was back on -- and as Lily seemed inexplicably angry with Potter, Severus appeared to have the upper hand, for now.
Other than that, things were surprisingly similar to the status quo ante. Weeks had passed, and the school year was drawing to a close, but he still sat with Mary in Potions… and Lily remained stationed, frostily, next to Potter. Severus still sat by himself at the Slytherin table. His housemates appeared to have bought the premise that his actions this year had actually been the work of some sort of Gryffindor plot, and seemed to consider his supposed rescue of Lily to be pathetic, but not unexpected. There was much that could be excused in pursuit of a pretty girl, even a pretty Mudblood girl, and all but Avery seemed fairly underwhelmed by the recent events. Avery’s attempts at drumming up some sort of thirst for revenge had seemingly been met with apathy. Most of the particulars of Severus’s life had stayed the same.
But Lily was talking to him, and that made all the difference. There had been multiple occasions: Lily walking along with him in the hallways if they happened to be going from one class to the next together. Lily giving his arm a squeeze as she strolled by him with her girlfriends in the dining hall. Even Lily tentatively running a prefect question past him for a second opinion. Unlike last year, Severus would give a carefully considered answer instead of his customary suggestion that a good Imperius curse would do the trick.
A good Imperius curse would do the trick. But now his new and improved self was to be under scrutiny at close range, so such renegade thoughts were banished.
“You ought to get him back,” Mary announced decisively out of nowhere, cutting into Severus’s musings as he read over Borage’s inadequate instructions.
“Get whom?” Severus asked.
“Potter. You know it was Potter, and you can’t just let him get away with that.” Mary seemed to have taken the insult more to heart than he had.
“I have to let him get away with that,” Severus answered softly, so that Potter couldn’t hear. “The last time I got in trouble with Lily, it was because I was fighting with Potter when she was around. I’m not going to let it happen again -- I’m afraid I’m something of a gelding where he’s concerned. For now.”
“You’re just going to sit there and take it? ” Mary asked angrily, eyes flashing, hands on her hips. Mary was exceptionally and sometimes incomprehensibly Scottish, but she seemed to have what would stereotypically have been considered an Irish temper, and right now it was up.
“No, but to justify fighting back, I think I have to have incontrovertible evidence,” he replied calmly. “Until I can produce some, I have to mind my P’s and Q’s.”
She gave him a quizzical look. “Interesting expression there, Sev.”
“What of it?” he asked, realising his mistake immediately and trying to look unconcerned.
“Wizards don’t generally use expressions that refer to Muggle devices -- in this case, the typewriter,” she stated.
“You assume I spent my summers in a cave somewhere, and not at Lily’s house,” he answered, bristling slightly.
“Ah, of course,” Mary replied calmly. “You’re an interesting case, Mr. Snape.”
“Not interesting at all,” he countered. “Just observant.”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmured. At some point he was going to have to come clean with her about his dad. But not now. Not even close to now.
………………………………
In pursuit of what he considered his second most important aim regarding the upcoming summer holidays, next to getting Lily to go out with him, Severus made his way over to the Defence classroom while the rest of the school meandered toward the Great Hall for lunch. He knocked and entered. In what appeared to be preparation for the summer, Professor Llewellyn was packing up his books into a large trunk that appeared both old and elegant. Severus made a mental note to himself that well-made plus ancient equaled classy, and tried, unsuccessfully, to apply this equation to the rusty set of tailored dress robes once belonging to his late grandfather, Claudius Prince, that had been passed on to him, in case he ever needed them for a dance, a formal dinner, or any other occasion in which he wanted to appear impoverished and ridiculous at the same time. How did some people manage to use the antique with such aplomb? His own efforts somehow carried with them an aura of dust and mothballs.
“Professor, sir,” he began, as Llewellyn looked up from a stack of exams and greeted him. He was reluctant to ask about the lessons over the summer, even though they had been Llewellyn’s idea. It seemed like imposing.
“You can call me Davis, Severus,” the professor said, his voice quiet and somewhat tired. “The school year is, for all intents and purposes, over.”
“But you’ll be teaching us next year,” Severus answered.
No reply. Llewellyn gave him a worried look and opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it again.
“Won’t you?” Severus went on, feeling suddenly a bit off. Lily and Mary had been talking about this very possibility not long before-- when and why the inevitable would occur. And apparently Severus had been optimistic enough or, more likely, blind enough, not to believe it.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Llewellyn said quietly, standing up and starting to pace, as was his usual habit when working on anything tricky or difficult. “I didn’t know how to tell anyone, so I haven’t. It will be announced. News will get out soon enough.”
“But why?” Severus asked. “You can’t leave.”
“I can hardly stay,” Llewellyn said dully. “Surely it hasn’t escaped your attention that I’m sick all the bloody time. I’m not Dumbledore’s age, Severus. I’m twenty-four -- it’s not normal. But whatever is wrong with me appears to be transmissible, and I don’t want to pass it on to any of the students. It’s my stupid fault, not yours.”
“It’s hardly your fault that you’re sick,” Severus protested.
“Really?” Llewellyn asked. “I’ve kept my sins to myself rather well around here, but you of all people should know.”
“About what?!” Severus demanded. “What could you possibly have done?”
“What didn’t I do?!” the professor snapped. He sat down, looking suddenly very weary and much older, and waved Severus into a seat in the front row. Severus sat slowly down, trying to digest the idea that Llewellyn really was leaving.
“What do you remember of what you saw?” the professor asked quietly. “I have some idea -- you don’t have to let on. I just want to know where to begin.”
Severus knew that to which he referred, but hesitated. “You. Your friend. I’m not sure -- it was dark. You were fighting with … something. You had a syringe, and the creature fought back and used it against you. And that’s all I saw. I supposed it was your research.”
Llewellyn nodded, and for a period of time that might have lasted for about a minute, but felt like an eternity, he looked thoughtful. “You’ll keep this to yourself?” he asked.
Severus nodded.
“But you need to know,” Llewellyn stated, as if trying to convince himself.
He took a deep breath. “It was our research,” he agreed. “We worked with the witch-doctors, of course. And some of them were good people, wonderful people, but some of them -- it’s the same as wizards here. But we ignored that if they could help us do our work. We used dodgy materials, Severus -- remains from the were-people we were trying to study -- I don’t want to think about how they were obtained. I don’t think our local contacts killed anyone,” he said quickly. “But I have no doubt that they violated fresh graves, which were plentiful -- the local bouda population was being mysteriously decimated at the time. And I took the samples they gave us -- Jonathan and I both did. For science. A potion can’t always be made with things in bottles from the shelf.” He gestured toward the photo on his desk, the one with the two smiling young men. Severus found himself noticing how much younger and healthier his professor had looked just a few years before, as though much more time had passed.
Llewellyn paused and stood up. “But it turned out that we needed specimens from the living. And of course, studying a reclusive population like that, one doesn’t exactly get eager cooperation. We tracked the sickly ones, pinned them down, took what we needed….”
Llewellyn drew a deep breath and continued, with rising intensity, “And as it turned out, the sickly ones had a wasting curse of some sort. Like nothing anyone has ever seen before. And here I am, three years after getting scratched and bitten and attacked with a goddamned syringe full of blood--” He took a deep breath. “Davis Llewellyn, scholar and humanitarian, author of the Research Subjects Protection Act. Have you heard of it?”
Severus nodded.
“That’s my claim to fame,” Llewellyn muttered bitterly. “Humanitarian indeed. I went home and thought over what I’d done. We got caught up in it -- we were so close to succeeding. We were going to help them, even if they didn’t want us to. I think we came to the conclusion independently that our methods were inexcusable -- after the fact, of course. After we had what we needed. I came up with the Research Subjects Protection Act that same year. I thought it was penance.” He pushed up the sleeve of his impeccably-tailored jacket, exposing on his forearm a strange, purplish lesion the likes of which Severus had never seen before.
“This is penance,” the professor concluded wearily, thrusting his arm out and then shoving the sleeve back down in obvious disgust. “Catching one bloody illness after another, things that no otherwise healthy person should get. Passing it on to my wife, which, I’m sorry to say, is how I know that this particular wasting curse appears to be transmissible. This is penance. Of course, relatively speaking, I’ve had good fortune -- Jonathan went quickly, probably because the Healers there don’t have the resources they have here. I really have nothing to complain about. But I don’t plan on making the situation any worse.”
Severus was dumbstruck for once. “I’m-- I’m sorry,” he finally stammered.
“Don’t be,” Llewellyn said softly. “Just don’t be an idiot like I was. The ends don’t justify the means, Severus. Remember that when you’re off saving the world from your housemates. Or saving Miss Evans from your housemates, in any case. Nicely done, by the way -- I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. How did you know she was going to be out there?”
“I didn’t,” Seveus said softly. The professor looked puzzled, so Severus went on. “I knew that they were up to something. I was the one taking Polyjuice Potion and playing Prefect, dressed up as Lily. Lily came after them dressed as me. I’m sorry to say that I was not only unconscious during the whole thing -- I was also in a skirt.”
Llewellyn laughed for the first time during their conversation. “Better than being caught yourself,” he stated. “Very clever. I’m sure Lily wanted your guts for garters, though.”
“We had a long talk,” Severus agreed. “She did most of the talking.”
“I’m sure she had to see that you make a more useful spy than she does,” the professor answered. “It’s as well that they think it’s her. Better they think you just did it to impress a girl and not to protect a bunch of Muggleborns you don’t know.”
“I think I convinced her of that,” Severus answered. “Eventually.” Of course, to some degree he had just done it to impress a girl -- but it had all gotten more complex than that in the last year.
“I won’t be seeing you for lessons, obviously,” Llewellyn stated, suddenly changing the topic. “But feel free to write--”
“Why not?” Severus asked, frowning.
“You did catch the bit about this curse, whatever it is, being transmissible,” Llewellyn half-stated and half-asked. Severus nodded. “As you might imagine, until I can figure out what kind of a risk I pose to others, I should keep to myself.”
“Are any of the faculty getting sick?” Severus asked. “Or any of your students?”
“Not that I know of,” Llewellyn replied. “Give it time, though.”
“Then I’d rather take my chances and keep up the lessons,” Severus stated firmly, and felt himself digging in for a debate. Somehow he had no doubt of this. Occlumency had too much potential to just let it go.
“But to possibly put a student in harm’s way--”
“You’re no longer a professor. You said so yourself, Davis,” Severus concluded, slyly.
Llewellyn smiled a weary smile. “Very clever,” he answered. “But even if you’re not a student, you’re a child.”
“I’m seventeen -- I’m of age,” Severus announced, relishing the thought and listing off his privileges. “I can drink FireWhiskey. I can get married, if I could find any girl mad enough to marry me. I can join the war and go off and get myself killed.”
“Or you can use your newfound rights and privileges under the law to take Occlumency lessons from someone bearing a curse that could potentially kill you.”
“I believe the risk is low. Statistically. You don’t seem to have passed along the curse to anyone by shaking hands quite yet.”
Llewellyn looked at him and slowly shook his head. “Given what I’ve just told you, I’m sure you understand how I would have to disagree with your choice. Really, if you feel like doing something stupid because you’re seventeen and you can, I’d suggest the bit about finding a girl. Honestly, Severus, I would consider this to be making a poor decision in the interest of the pursuit of knowledge.”
“And I would consider it knowledge that has significant potential to protect me against a much more likely threat,” Severus answered. “And therefore a worthwhile trade.”
It was a standoff. Severus sat there, unyielding, while Llewellyn looked thoughtful and worried.
“I’d have to have Dumbledore’s permission,” the professor said suddenly.
“Why?” Severus asked, finding himself bold now that the man would no longer be officially teaching him.
“A matter of protocol. I may want to teach here again some day, you know, provided that I live long enough to do so. It would help if I didn’t inadvertently curse any students in the meantime.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I don’t understand why anyone would ever teach here,” Severus offered. “I might be doing you a favor.”
Llewellyn smiled. “You don’t think you’d like teaching? You have a fine mind, Severus -- I’d think you might be rather good.”
“I don’t particularly like people,” Severus said plainly. “And I like them even less when they’re ignorant.”
“Touché, ” Llewellyn said with a grin. “Right then-- I’ll ask Dumbledore,” he said with finality.
“If you must,” Severus answered.
In response, the professor pulled out a card from his breast pocket, walked over to the desk that would soon no longer be his, and, picking up a quill, leaned over and scratched something onto the card. He touched the card with his wand, and Severus could see the spider tracks of handwriting reform into a fluent, old-fashioned, and eminently legible form of penmanship. “You could send a note by owl-post,” Llewellyn said, handing his calling card to Severus. “Or, if you’re proficient in the use of the telephone, you could telephone this number”-- and he pointed to the digits in fresh ink on the bottom of the card. Telephone? The Muggle in-laws, of course. Severus was glad that he had thought before he asked.
“Thank you,” Severus said. “For everything.”
“You’re very welcome,” Llewellyn responded, with a twitch that Severus realised was the reflexive offering of his hand followed by a retraction before his student could take the hand and shake it. “You’re one of the brightest students I’ve met, Severus, and definitely the most interesting. It’s been a pleasure.” There was an air of finality to it that Severus didn’t like.
“No need to use the past tense. It will continue to be a pleasure,” Severus replied decisively.
“It will,” Llewellyn said with a nod, his voice quiet, and Severus understood that, in some sense, anyway, he had won.
………………
The news from Professor Llewellyn -- Davis -- took Severus a few days to digest. He gradually became resigned to it, and tried to see the bright side in being probably the only student to continue to receive tutelage from the man. There had been no announcement yet -- that would probably have to wait until the End of Term Feast -- so Severus had kept the bad news to himself, even avoiding telling Lily. She and Mary, being girls, had picked up on the fact that their friend was in an ill mood and had responded with a combination of teasing and concern, so he had tried to cheer up, but it was difficult. He never enjoyed the end of the school year, and this particular year was no exception.
And then there was the new state of his resurrected friendship with Lily. He wasn’t sure what he had expected -- that Lily would throw herself into his arms and declare her love for him? Of course not. But not this. He was happy, certainly, but still, not at peace -- in fact, he felt somewhat let down. Perhaps it was because his goal, so long denied him, had now been achieved. It was like the day after Christmas. He had Lily back -- now what the hell did he have to look forward to?
Obviously he could return to his efforts to getting Lily to go out with him; however, those efforts consisted more of a negation than in any practical action, since one thing that didn’t seem to have budged a bit in their year apart was Lily’s insistence upon the Unwritten Rules.
Severus hated the Unwritten Rules. They were one-sided, they were completely controlled by Lily, and they were unfair -- but they were, nonetheless, his code of conduct. He was not to express any interest in her as a girl. He was not to touch her, look at her, speak to her, speak about her, or extend invitations to her in any way that would imply a romantic interest. Valentine’s Day was for pranks, not for romance. He was not to ask her to dances -- as if he would -- although asking her to study or to accompany him to Hogsmeade was acceptable. He was not to flirt with her -- not that he was any bloody good at flirtation. He strongly suspected that this problem was why FireWhiskey had been invented, and that, were he foolish enough to consume it, he would probably require murderous doses thereof even to relax enough to get flirtatious with Lily. That said, Lily was allowed to flirt with him. She could link her arm in his, ruffle his hair, squeeze his shoulder, employ flattery or teasing or whatever the hell she wanted to entice him -- and then stop and hold him at an arm’s length. She could dance slow and close with him in her parents’ front room until the air was positively crackling between them, and then pull away and act as though nothing had happened, a memory that still made him catch his breath. It had been this way since approximately their fourteenth year.
And so, his efforts to get Lily to go out with him consisted primarily of following the Unwritten Rules and trying not to piss her off. In order to win her, he had to imply on rare and private occasions, in only the most witty and clever of ways, that he was in love with her, while outwardly appearing ninety-nine percent of the time to have no interest at all. Of course, there was no guarantee that this would be effective. Meanwhile, James Potter had free reign to openly woo her. Severus tried not to think about the situation too much, since it threw him into an even more misanthropic mood than usual.
Nonetheless, with this in mind, he walked up behind Lily in the hallway and, since she and Mary appeared to be unaware of his presence, gave her a brotherly thump on the shoulder.
“Knut for your thoughts,” he began lamely. She appeared distracted.
“Just the trunk in Professor Llewellyn’s classroom,” Lily said, “And the fact that he’s our Defence professor.”
She didn’t have to speak in full and complete sentences for Severus to understand her.
“He’s still here, though, isn’t he?” Severus asked. “Usually by this point, something has happened.” It was a way to avoid giving away what he knew.
“I’d feel better if it had,” Lily answered grimly. “I don’t like not knowing.”
“Not knowing what?”
“What’s going to prevent him from returning next year. Because something has to happen to him, doesn’t it?” she asked. “I don’t want him getting killed on the train back home. Or getting another rare type of pneumonia and getting carried off. You’re not the only one who’s rather fond of him, you know.”
“Maybe he’ll just get a better job offer,” Severus replied with a shrug. “But I hope not. Obviously. Besides, usually they don’t last this long, and despite getting sick all the time--”
“--and very thin,” Mary cut in.
“And getting very thin,” Severus agreed, continuing, “He’s still here. No lengthy stay in the mental ward at St. Mungo’s.”
“No secret past as a Dark wizard,” Lily continued.
“No bedrest,” Severus added.
“I wonder how Professor DeSilva is doing, anyway,” Lily mused. “She was brilliant. I wonder whether she’s still an Auror, with the baby and all.”
“No cursing himself in front of the entire fourth year class,” Severus continued, returning to the original subject. Babies interested him very little.
“That was fun,” Lily remarked dryly.
“Indeed,” Severus responded with a smirk, savoring the memory, which had been simultaneously horrifying and hilarious, and had rendered a largely incompetent professor wholly incompetent for the teaching of students.
“So he’s packing, but nothing has been said about him leaving,” Lily stated, reiterating the current situation. Severus chose not to reply in any way.
“I’d think they’d tell you, because you’re a prefect,” Severus prevaricated.
“And I’d think he’d tell you, because you’re so bloody special,” Lily continued tartly. Severus seemed to have inadvertently struck a nerve.
So, in her own way, had Lily. Can’t anyone besides you and James Potter be special for once? he found himself thinking, and immediately suppressed the thought. The Occlumency lessons had been useful not only in protecting his thoughts from others, but in protecting himself from his own thoughts.
“Why don’t you ask him for lessons yourself, then?” Severus asked, as blandly as possible under the circumstances. It was a good way to distract from the topic of whether or not Llewellyn would be returning in the fall.
Lily crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head, and then gave him a rather wan smile. “I am so bloody jealous, Sev. Happy for you, yes. But jealous. The best professor in the entire school, and you’ll have his home address. And carte blanche to come over for tea and have him dig around in that lovely, twisted mind of yours.” With her typical open temperament, Lily had expressed her envy, and doing so had clearly cheered her up. Her dark thoughts were out, and she obviously felt better.
“The best professor would have to be McGonagall,” Severus said honestly, even as he relished the back-handed compliment. “Llewellyn still barely manages to keep his class from devolving into chaos.”
“Yes, but from the female point of view, Llewellyn is also attractive, in a skinny, intellectual sort of way,” Lily answered, tilting her head to the side dreamily, and then shook it off and gave him a beaming grin. “Which some girls have been known to find appealing. Tootle pip,” she concluded, with what appeared to be a bizarre Muggle valediction and with, of course, a brotherly thump on the shoulder in return for his, and turned and walked briskly and cheerily away from him.
Which some girls have been known to find appealing… was she flirting with him? Very obliquely? He just stood there -- skinny, intellectual, and puzzled -- and finally came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. If she were flirting, there was nothing he could do about it, for to respond in kind would be to break the Unwritten Rules. He had forgotten how calculating he had to be around Lily, even when she wasn’t giving him the silent treatment.
Except in summer, and summer was only two days away. Perhaps he could make progress with Lily after all… if he could survive one more summer with his bloody awful parents.
Chapter Endnotes: Thanks again to Fresca/ Colores, who has been beta'ing this for longer than I'd like to think, and to everyone who sticks with it even though it's taking me forever to write. Transitional chapter, obviously-- I hope to have another one ready soon.