By the end of the academic year, Severus was squeezed dry like a lemon. Slughorn had really set him up with his completely unexpected departure, really set him up badly. He wanted nothing—except perhaps to stop breathing. Of course, he could have chosen one of the dozen vials standing in his safe on a separate shelf, used one—and they wouldn't have been able to revive him even at St. Mungo's, but... He couldn't allow himself this luxury: his vow held him back. He had to live at least another seventeen years. Until the boy got on his feet. Damned slavery to an infant located who knows where... A vile feeling that you don't belong to yourself. His fingers clenched into a fist from hatred. No, not toward the child—what did he have to do with it—toward the situation, toward himself. A double agent? A double traitor... Is this what he survived for?
Though he didn't consider himself particularly alive anyway. Maybe that's exactly why the Slytherins accepted him as their head of house after all? He heard in passing how someone, it seemed like Pusey... or was it Burke?—expressed sympathy for his loss, and he was ready to blow up the entire green common room along with its inhabitants at that very moment, but a moment before that he understood what, in the student's opinion, he had lost: his Lord.
He burst out laughing in their faces then, hoarsely, harshly, for the first time in these years. The kids (though what kids were they, only a couple years younger than him!) paled and recoiled. And he felt with every fiber of his repeatedly beaten half-blood skin that he had nothing left to lose. He didn't give a damn about the opinion of these little aristocrats and all their ancestors, wholesale and retail, he didn't give a damn who thought what about him or what they said, he didn't give a damn about danger and would give a damn about death... But how can you not care about the one you only long to meet, to say just one thing: "Finally."
Such people don't seek attention, but often become its center. Such people say little, but for some reason they are listened to attentively. Very attentively. Always.
Having popularly explained how and why fools in their ranks wouldn't survive, and softening his harsh tirade at the end by saying that anyone sorted into Slytherin by definition couldn't be a fool, he demanded unconditional compliance with his law from the house. And it was simple: always stand by your own and leave nothing without consequences. The children drew their own conclusions, uncertainly glancing at their head of house.
"In conflicts with others—are our people always right?" Mike Reynolds' youthful bass was the first swallow.
Snape nodded affirmatively.
"Solve all problems among ourselves only within the house?"
"Bravo, Miss Tuttle."
"Can we... do anything, just not get caught? And if you?..."
"Including from me, Mr. Darker," he replied, anticipating the question ready to break free. "Reynolds, Tuttle, Darker—from this day, prefects. How you divide responsibilities, I don't care. If you need assistants, appoint them yourselves. Questions? No? Everyone to dormitories."
The house... flourished. Aristocrats, children of Death Eaters, almost branded by this kinship, children of the defeated, bullied by children of the victors, desperately needed something like this. He knew very well what it was like—to be constantly persecuted without support, and so he gave it. And with this he conquered all their arrogance—the only thing that had kept them afloat before this. Before him. Now they all held each other up. Only one question he asked himself once: why did he do this?
He entrusted the prefects with monitoring behavior, also entrusting them with punishments and rewards; though he also began holding them fully accountable, for which, to his surprise, respect for his person only grew. He simply enchanted the exit from the common room so that at night, without knowing the key, no one could enter or leave. And only he and the prefects knew the password. Since then, being head of house stopped causing him extra trouble. And the house points steadily climbed upward.
Slytherin, now his own, became support for him too, a small island—no, not of peace (what peace with children from eleven to seventeen, I beg you...)—simply "his place." Where his rules worked. Where his people lived.
The "personal" laboratory became home... He refused to occupy the apartments vacated by Slughorn: too far from the dungeons, from his students and from the laboratory, of course. Its equipment became what somewhat reconciled him with reality. Therefore, the new Potions professor acquired a tiny ascetic bedroom adjacent to a spacious office with a decent working library, assembled, apparently, not only by old Sluggy. The book wealth that had migrated to him from several generations of predecessors was Hogwarts' second advantage...
Colleagues... He felt neutral toward most of them, since most often each of them simply minded their own business, not interfering in anything else. And he didn't have to interact particularly with any of them except McGonagall. He had managed to hate the Gryffindor head of house this year. And it wasn't at all that she tried to doubt his competence in every way—here a nod toward Dumbledore was enough: whoever hired him could field the questions, her opinion was completely purple to him. But her completely permissive attitude toward her house and bias in Slytherin-Gryffindor conflicts—this he could never forgive her.
With the other heads of house he managed to communicate quite calmly. The sighs of Madam Sprout annoyed him, which she let out every time she saw him, and the strange looks she threw at him. He didn't want to find out what was wrong with her, and so—simply kept his distance. The Ravenclaw head was as small as he was inconspicuous, plus completely adequate in resolving any issues, which, however, practically never arose. With others he had no contact at all: there were no reasons. His students, fortunately, began coping beautifully on their own, pulling their lagging classmates to an acceptable level during the general preparation hours introduced by the prefects into the house routine.
But the minus, the only one that overshadowed all the good, his torment and punishment—students in Potions. This was a daily nightmare, a mad extravaganza of clumsiness, deafness, and stupidity. They spat on all instructions, they listened... no, it couldn't be called listening: they behaved as if they heard nothing. Every day something exploded, and he thanked Merlin if there was only one explosion. And the waste of ingredients that might not be particularly valuable, but in such quantities?! No, he loved Potions too much to teach it...
And so today he wrote a request for transfer to the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. There he could give these half-wits called Hogwarts students a program such that, with high probability, by the end of the year they would all remain whole, healthy, and relatively unharmed. Why Dumbledore rejected him, Severus still couldn't understand. That he would cope (with his knowledge of the Dark Arts!), there was no doubt, but what then? He wasn't able to untangle the headmaster's verbosity, which irritated him for not the first time. Why did he even agree to this job? He should have gone and died, it would have been much simpler. Or sat in prison... But innate stubbornness whispered: "Simple paths are for weaklings... And you're not weak. Simple paths aren't for you." And there seemed to be nothing to object to.
A stalemate... Against Albus Dumbledore his hand wouldn't even rise, against himself—wouldn't fall because of his debt to the old headmaster. The only thing that warmed him—the possibility of spending the entire summer in the laboratory. That's where he was heading, not wanting to listen anymore to the incomprehensibly soothing speeches of the headmaster and see McGonagall's malicious face. He would definitely have said something to her... The headmaster was wrong to seat them almost next to each other at the table. Or maybe he did it on purpose? Severus had noticed more than once with what satisfied gleam in his eyes he began educating them in his office over tea after their clashes. Though it somehow didn't seem like an attempt at reconciliation, despite the Earl Grey and sweets...
The memory of the final meeting of heads of house continued spinning in his head: he kept trying to extract a rational kernel from the headmaster's speeches (maybe in vain?), to understand why he received the refusal... He wanted to get drunk and forget. At least temporarily step away from all these stupid but no less painful questions. Only there was nothing to drink. Though he could simply send an order to Hogsmeade. Exactly! He would do just that now, fortunately, there were no children left in the school. Only... near the door to the laboratory loomed the small figure of the most non-confrontational of his colleagues. And this was quite unusual...
***
Filius Flitwick had been observing his young colleague, his recent student, all year. Observing and... sympathizing. The boy was still very young, and such a problematic head position had fallen on him plus teaching perhaps the most difficult and dangerous subject in the school. And the main difficulty was what was impossible to fight: the almost complete inability of wizards to work with their hands. It seemed the colleague hadn't fully realized this yet...
While he pondered how to more delicately offer his help, Snape had surprisingly quickly dealt with his own house. Simply by some kind of miracle. Interesting, how? The only thing the Ravenclaw head could still help his colleague with—suppress the sprouts of dislike for Slytherins in his own house. Well, there wasn't much need to work at it: his students' interests lay, as a rule, in a completely different sphere. But Gryffindor...
No, he would never understand Minerva! And yet how many years they had been, one could say, friends—since they told each other where the Hat had intended them. Just think, they could have been in each other's place! Now he didn't want to have anything in common with the scarlet-and-gold house.
Getting to know Snape closely, meeting seemingly by chance, just wasn't working out. The Ravenclaw tower was located too far from the dungeons. And he continued observing. And gradually finding more and more in common between the short half-goblin, forced lifelong duelist and Charms Master, and the tall black-and-white Slytherin, the youngest Master in England. And his excellent mind, perfect memory, and extraordinary analytical abilities allowed him during all this time to come to certain conclusions. Very important ones. But today... Today he finally made one simple conclusion he hadn't dared to before. He realized he wanted to save the boy.
***
"Greetings, Severus. I hope you'll forgive your professor... You wouldn't happen to have whiskey, scotch, cognac?"
Severus helplessly shook his head.
"Well, then..."—the half-goblin seemed to pull a hefty bottle of Glenmorangie out of thin air—"...I hope you'll invite me in?"
Snape was dumbstruck for a couple of seconds. He certainly hadn't expected this from his former professor, but propriety... Removing the protection, he made an inviting gesture, suddenly realizing he hadn't experienced such vivid feelings in a long time: surprise, curiosity and... anticipation? As if he had suddenly become alive, unexpectedly feeling that he was still only twenty-two...
They sat down at a small table transfigured by Flitwick from some stand, simultaneously summoning chairs. Severus had indeed acquired four at once, plus a couple of sofas, as soon as he realized that conversing with prefects and senior students was much more convenient this way, fortunately the office size allowed it.
"Young man, how bad is everything with you—two fingers or three?" Flitwick had already prepared snifter glasses. A master, what can you say...
Severus, who had perked up at the word "bad," imagined the entire bottle... no, a lake in which one could drown... But quickly appreciated the half-goblin's genius.
"One, perhaps. You seem to want to chat, not levitate my dead-drunk carcass to St. Mungo's?"
"Well, if you're against me refreshing my healer skills by pumping alcohol poisoning out of a former student..."
The bottle clinked slightly against the rim, and Severus understood that his former teacher was nervous after all. Strangely, this calmed him.
"Who am I to object? Pour more..."
Flitwick smiled sadly.
"Alas, if we follow proportion, there won't be enough for two..."
And caught Snape's surprised look.
For some time they simply drank in complete silence.
Snape wanted to down everything at once, but his head, alas, was working too well, so he restrained himself. And still it was curious why the half-goblin wanted to... get close to him?
The little professor smiled as if answering his thoughts.
"Curiosity is your strong trait, Severus. Curiosity and intelligence. To them!"
The bottle gurgled briefly once more. Twice.
"Wondering what I want to learn from you? Don't strain yourself, young man. I won't be asking questions. I'll tell you something myself. Because it's already clear to me that we're birds of a feather."
Hearing this, Snape nearly choked.
And the little professor continued, and in his voice rang such real, such familiar to Severus bitterness...
"You, like me, found yourself between two fires. And simultaneously—a servant of two masters. Like me, a double spy between two irreconcilable..."
"How do you...?"
"Do you really think that with all the xenophobia of wizard-people, someone would just simply allow a half-goblin to teach children?" Flitwick smiled sadly. "Have you seen many like me?"
Severus felt that he was... seeing clearly. And his colleague continued.
"Yes, I've been a double spy for more than seventy years. And I think you'll find my... let's say, experience useful. Because you're behaving, I must tell you... Eh."
He waved his hand, poured a little more amber liquid into his glass and sniffed it with pleasure.
"Is everything that bad?"
"You completely don't know how to relax, colleague. You won't last long in such a regime. Life, I dare say this banality, is one, and it's not over while there are certain obligations. Am I understanding correctly?"
Severus nodded grimly.
"Building a grim expression, as you've chosen, is possible and even worthwhile, it's an excellent mask and decent cover, but what you definitely shouldn't do is let it grow onto your face."
He sipped the cognac and continued.
"We are figures on the board, but what figure you'll become isn't clear yet. You don't want to be a pawn, am I right? To differ from one, you must first of all live. This is your duty—to live through every moment, because for people like us everything can break off at any instant. In the most unpleasant way, yes..."
Snape felt like a first-year boy at his first Charms lesson... Seventy years! Seventy, and all of them—between goblins and wizards. And here he was living, smiling, able to joke and savor elite spirits. And Flitwick had probably had it tougher than him from birth. And what are seventeen years against seventy?.. And he's still complaining about something?
"I would consider it an honor to be your student," escaped from him, though there had been no offer. And there couldn't have been—this wasn't magical Apprenticeship.
But the contentedly smiling professor spoke the entire formula—as it should have sounded—taking upon himself, even if partially, his burden too. And didn't let him object, silencing him with one gesture.
"Professor Flitwick," the school address seemed most appropriate when he could speak again. "I must say..."
Severus fell silent. He was obligated, bound to tell everything, but wasn't ready for confessions right now.
"I'll be glad to hear my name from your lips, Severus," the Teacher gently but confidently showed possible boundaries. And with this one phrase indicated their rights. Equal. "Not ready to confess now—don't. And maybe don't need to at all. At least, not about everything. Tomorrow we'll choose what's really important, and the personal... that's why it's personal, to stay with oneself."
Severus nodded affirmatively and gratefully. Something loosened inside. Life... must go on.
"And never, do you hear, young man, never give up and don't let yourself be cornered," he heard as if from far away.
Summer was ahead. It was long enough...
They would manage much.