InsaneJournal

Sequel/Prequel Meme #4
This one is for earthphoenix, who requested a look at Severus years after the events of Educatum Esse (Note: The original story depicts the sexual abuse of a child.)


The headmaster's bedposts are carved with larks. He shouldn't know this, but he does.

He knows it in the way he knows a thousand other things he hasn't seen with his own eyes: that there is a ringed planet called Saturn, that there once lived a wizard named Merlin, that the African Serengeti has lions and that chimeras are born out of volcanic earth.

The thought doesn't bother him often. Much of the time he doesn't even remember that he remembers, until a glimpse, a whisper, a ghost of a thought brings it back to the surface.

He watches the headmaster in the company of Harry Potter. The way the boy lights up at his attention, the fatherly hand Dumbledore rests upon his shoulder.

Jealousy worms through him; that must be the sick, squirming feeling in the pit of his stomach, jealousy. The headmaster dotes on the boy the way he doted on James Potter, worlds away from the treatment any Slytherin has ever received at his hands. In his seven years at Hogwarts, Professor Dumbledore favoured him with a word or glance on only a scarce handful of occasions. A pat on the head once a year. "Keeping up your studies, Mr. Snape? I'll trust your discretion on the matter of Remus Lupin, Mr. Snape."

(And yet there are the larks...)

He steals glances at the boy's mind. He only skims the surface, but Harry Potter is all surface, banal thoughts bubbling away, his memories clear and simple as storybook illuminations.

Severus doesn't know what he's searching for, only that he's relieved not to find it.

"You've been working too hard," Dumbledore murmurs in his ear when he catches him watching Potter in the corridor.

He stills, flushing warm at the nearness of him. How long has it been since he's been touched by another human being? His eyes slip momentarily shut, and for an instant he sees the larks--hears the creak of bed ropes and smells the scent of sweat and sickly sweet incense--and he finds himself lonesome and hungry and frightened all at once.

He shakes his head. "I'm working exactly as hard as I need to."

The headmaster chuckles, such a warm and charming sound that Severus feels a faint pang when he parts from him.

He watches him go, down the corridor and up a staircase that pivots obligingly towards the eastern tower. It is not the first time he's been tempted to follow, to climb the spiralling path past the headmaster's office to the private rooms above. When Dumbledore is away, abroad on his mysterious errands, he has reflected that all it would take is a word to Filch, perhaps a lie to Minerva, to finally unlock that door and satisfy a terrible, creeping curiosity.

But not today. There are essays to mark and correspondence to catch up on, and that idiot Lockhart to deal with. There is work, always more work to do, and as he turns to go about his business, all thoughts of lions and unseen places flit from his mind as lightly and kindly as a blessing.