Author's Note: Many thanks to the patient and hard-working Vaughn for her beta services and to those who have stuck with this story despite my delays in posting. I truly appreciate your readership.

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Insidious

by Grainne

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Chapter 7: Strategic Differences

For teachers across Britain, the final weeks of August comprise equal parts nightmare and farce, and this was no less the case for those employed at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It did not matter that they had magic, a legion of willing house-elves, and a semi-sentient castle at their disposal. They could not exempt themselves from slogging through tedious paperwork and sitting through endless meetings, nor could they avoid the pre-term urge to gossip, squabble, and moan. This year, however, there were the added burdens of seeing to security arrangements and responding to the daily owls from concerned parents and members of the Board.

At the insistence of the latter, a muscular vendor from Inside Out Wizarding Security Devices (No nook left unprobed! No cranny left unalarmed!) came to demonstrate—a bit over-enthusiastically to all but Filch’s taste—his company’s various products. Not long after, two fresh-faced Aurors arrived to do a refresher course on basic security magic. This managed to offend everyone in the room, most notably Sybill Trelawney, who had been rousted from her tower to attend and then told that scrying was not considered a reliable advance warning system. The two Aurors left considerably less fresh-faced, having been informed of their impending deaths in gruesome detail.

If that wasn’t enough, Scrimgeour’s minions were constantly making excuses to drop by the castle, and, lest anyone forget how concerned the Ministry was about Hogwarts, stacks of admonitory notices and pamphlets arrived almost daily, piling up in corners of the staff and common rooms. According to Filch, a fair few ended up lining the floor of the owlery. None of the staff owned up to the act, but all applauded it.

“You’d think,” Professor Flitwick said indignantly, crumpling the latest Ministry missive in his diminutive fist, “that after last year, they’d have the decency to keep well out of Hogwarts’ affairs. I am not spending the first five minutes of my class reviewing ‘Protecting Your Home and Family Against Dark Forces.’ They’d be better off actually practising the Shield Charm, and besides, it’s not as if they haven’t been tripping over these things all summer. It’s a wonder there isn’t a shortage of purple parchment.”

“Perhaps it might benefit some of the Muggle-born students?” Professor Sprout suggested gently. “I’m not certain the Ministry does an adequate job of reaching all of them.”

“Miss Granger is a Muggle-born, isn’t she?” Professor Flitwick countered. “She always seems well-informed on the goings-on in our world—past and present.”

“Miss Granger,” Snape said sourly, staring into the dregs of his tea, “makes a point of appearing well-informed on everything, or, at least, everything she can learn by reading and rote memory. I wouldn’t consider her a typical case, Filius.”

“Which is a pity,” sighed Professor Sprout.

“Oh, quite,” Snape murmured to himself.

“You know, Severus, she reminds me a bit of you,” said Professor McGonagall from the recesses of a plush armchair near the fire, “as you were when you first came to Hogwarts—intelligent, eager to prove yourself, and itching to do magic, even if it wasn’t quite, shall we say, orthodox.”

Snape gritted his teeth, set his teacup on a nearby table, and buried himself behind the newspaper. Normally, he never would have allowed such a comment to pass. At the very least, he would have stormed out of the room, but that was not an option. He could not leave the staff room—not yet, anyway.

Snape had received no reply to the last letter he’d sent from Spinner’s End. Since he’d returned to Hogwarts, he’d tried in vain to orchestrate a private meeting with the headmaster. Dumbledore had never been in his office when Snape had sought him out, and he’d made no reply to messages sent via house-elf. Meals had found him deep in conversation with other members of staff or communing with his food in that eyes closed, softly humming bliss that none dared disturb. He’d seemed to flit in and out of the castle at will, and no one had been able to say exactly where he’d gone.

Snape had not been foolish enough to try and follow Dumbledore on his mysterious errands, but he had decided to try and wait him out, and the staff room was the obvious choice. It was used for meetings and presentations, and the majority of the staff had taken to congregating there when not needed elsewhere. Some sought comfort in one another’s presence in a time of unease, but others were merely being practical, knowing that the moment they’d left for their own chambers they’d likely be recalled for yet another meeting. As such, no one had thought it odd when Snape had joined their number and staked out a corner of the room—and, more specifically, a generously upholstered armchair—for himself. There he read, drank countless cups of tea, indulged in what he thought to be the occasional witticism, and startled the house-elves who crept in during the wee hours, hoping for a chance to tidy the place. Dumbledore would have to turn up eventually, if only to conduct another wretched meeting.

Snape pretended to read until he was certain that the conversation had passed safely on from comparisons of Miss Granger to his youthful self. When all was quiet, he risked a peep over the top of the paper. Minerva was studiously ignoring him. Filius and Pomona had busied themselves once more with opening the piles of “To All Hogwarts Staff” owl post that covered much of the floor around their respective chairs.

Glancing about, Snape noted that it was not only the floor that was obscured from view. The house-elves must have given up, for most of the available surface area in the room was awash in parchment, parcels, copies of the Prophet, diagrams of the castle, uncomfortable-looking devices, and half-drunk cups of tea. And although the room also held evidence of more innocent staff pursuits—Slughorn’s tin of crystallized pineapple, Hooch’s broomstick servicing kit, Vector’s wizard chess set—Snape could not help noting that it more closely resembled a war room than a place of refuge from the toils of teaching.

Snape checked himself from sighing audibly. He rose, stretched, and refilled his teacup for the umpteenth time, all the while keeping an eye on the door. When no Dumbledore came through, Snape resignedly returned to his armchair. He’d been sitting in the thing for so long that the upholstery retained his form.

Suddenly, Snape heard his father’s voice, full of mirth.

“Would you have a look at that, Eileen—the lad’s finally made a good impression on someone! Get it, a good—”

“Ugh. You are such a rotten Muggle sometimes.”

“That’s right, Miss Sourface. And you just love me for it too; after all, what wizard could do…this?”

“Not now, Tobias! Off with you. Take Severus and go keep watch on the path; I’ve got to fix it before anyone notices.”

Snape sat very still, winded by the unexpectedness, the vividness, of the memory. A warm bank holiday. A train, then a bus. Sandwiches off a cart and bottles of orangeade. The botanical garden.

It had been so long ago, yet the sounds from that trip were now fresh in Snape’s ears, and when he closed his eyes, he could clearly picture the meandering gravel paths, the weedy fishpond, the ramshackle greenhouses…and the old bear pit.

He’d followed the path in at the ground level, stalking a small garden snake. Being four, he hadn’t been paying attention to anything much above the height of his own knees, but something about the change in the light and the temperature had made him look up. He’d found himself at the bottom of a cylindrical stone-lined pit. What little light there had been up above had seemed miles away, barely able to penetrate the canopy of birch and evergreen trees. The air had been cool and dank and completely still.

He would have been all right if he’d had time to adjust to, to understand, his surroundings, but the trapped snake had darted into a pile of leaf litter, and the sudden sound—imprisoned in the pit and reflected off its walls—had frightened him. His fear, too, had seemed to bounce off the walls, heaping upon him, until, in a panic, he had turned and fled.

He’d come to a fork in the path, and then another, and another. He’d veered blindly into hitherto unexplored parts of the garden. When he’d seen the giant brown man on the bench—so solid, so commanding with his top cat and cane—he’d scrambled up onto his lap without thinking.

It had only been a bronze statue, of course. But it had had a kind face (behind the fearsome moustache), and his four-year-old self had fit perfectly into the space bounded by metal chin, arms, chest, and thighs. He’d shut his eyes and wished himself invisible. He’d wished that the statue would wrap its arms around him, hide him, swallow him up—anything to dispel the overwhelming fear…and the shame at having it.

He hadn’t noticed that he’d actually started sinking into the statue until his father had pulled him out. There had been attempts to distract him with the promise of an ice cream, but Snape had seen the concavity, just the right size and shape for a small boy, in the metal statue.

All his mother had said later was, “Were you frightened? Had something upset you? Go on, it’s all right to tell me.” When he’d nodded reluctantly, she hadn’t been angry at all. She’d smiled at him, in fact, her eyes bright. “That’s my boy,” she had whispered.

Snape took a deep breath, forcibly clearing his mind. He glanced about, but no one was paying him the slightest attention. Minerva appeared to be dozing in her chair; Filius was furiously ticking things off on a lengthy piece of parchment; Pomona was still busy breaking wax seals and slitting envelopes.

Snape steadied himself with a sip of tea. The sooner he could discuss these trips down memory lane with Dumbledore, the better. In the meantime, he needed a distraction—something to keep his mind from sinking irrevocably into a nostalgic morass, something to allay his growing suspicion that the headmaster was avoiding him on purpose. Snape picked up the newspaper once more, this time determined to read in earnest.

After devouring the front page (not without the occasional sneer), Snape flipped through the rest of the paper. The writing in the Daily Prophet wasn’t much better than in the Muggle newspapers, but at least the wizarding world at large was cognizant of (and finally admitting to) the true cause of all the recent crime and unrest. Even if they went a bit overboard—take, for example, one Mr Billy Branaker, a Squib baker from Bermondsey.

On page two, Snape had seen Mr Branaker’s claim that his business had been sabotaged by Death Eaters. However, the bulk of the interview, buried on page eight, offered no tales of extortion or wholesale destruction. Mr Branaker stated as proof the facts that an entire order of cauldron cakes had gone missing in between his premises and a retailer in Diagon Alley and that the jam he needed to complete a large order of Victoria sponge had mysteriously gone off two weeks before its expiry.

Snape smiled and shook his head at the man’s naïveté. Did Mr Branaker really think that the Death Eaters’ illicit activities centred on liberating baked goods? That the Dark Lord sought to bring Muggle and wizarding society to its knees by infecting it with botulism or depriving it of cake?

“Something in there amuses you? Good God, man! You must have a warped sense of humour. It’s been nothing but murder and mayhem all summer.”

Snape looked up into the haggard face of Professor Van Meyer, the Muggle Studies teacher.

“Oh, one likes to keep up with the accomplishments of old friends,” Snape said mildly.

A horrified look crossed Van Meyer’s face, but then he coloured and said stiffly, “You’re having me on again, aren’t you?”

Snape merely raised an eyebrow. Van Meyer was wary, but intensely curious, about Snape’s rumoured past. For years he had been not-so-subtly fishing for evidence that Snape was an unrepentant gobbler of Muggle children (or something equally foul), and for years Snape had led Van Meyer on a merry dance whenever the latter’s macabre imagination had got the better of his manners. Really, if the man hadn’t figured out the game by now…

“Cauldron cakes, Ian,” Snape said wearily, pointing at the article he’d been reading. “Some baker thinks the Death Eaters are after his cauldron cakes.” The sound of quiet snickering came from several of the nearby armchairs.

“Yes, well…” Van Meyer frowned. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, looking extremely uncomfortable, but he did not move from his spot in front of Snape’s chair. Snape noticed that he held a stack of books.

“Was there something you wanted, Ian?”

Van Meyer gave an exasperated sigh and held out the books. “Dumbledore said to give you these.”

“Dumbledore?” Snape sat up a little straighter. “You have seen him today?”

Van Meyer shook his head, a guarded expression on his face. “No, I—this was last week. I haven’t had a chance to dig them out until now, what with all the pre-term madness.” He cleared a place on the table at Snape’s elbow and set the books down. “And I confess I did think it a bit of a private joke at first, given the subject matter.” He glanced pointedly at the spines of the books. Snape followed his gaze, and what he saw made him cringe.

There were several volumes on Muggle values and social habits, including Miss Minchin’s Guide to Modern Muggle Mores. Perched saucily on top was a gaudy lavender book entitled, So, You Want to Mingle with Muggles?: A Roadmap for Cross-Cultural Relationships.

“But then I realised,” Ian went on hastily, “that the headmaster was hardly likely to be joking in times such as these, so—”

“On the contrary,” Dumbledore called out.

The headmaster had suddenly appeared within the entrance to the staff room. Snape sat up straight, attempting to catch his eye, but Dumbledore would not look at him.

“Jokes are essential in times like these, Ian,” Dumbledore went on, making his way over to Van Meyer’s side. “Have you a good one for me, by any chance?”

“No, Headmaster. I was just giving Professor Snape those…er…reading materials you asked me about.”

Dumbledore smiled. “Ah, yes. Had some trouble finding them, I see? No matter, I’m sure Severus will still be able to put them to good use.”

“Are we rationing toilet tissue this year?” Snape said, glaring at the offensive pile. This earned an outraged look from Van Meyer and another round of snickering from the other staff nearby.

“Severus,” Dumbledore said quietly.

Snape almost expected his employer to admonish him, but the older man merely looked at him expectantly. Snape threw the paper aside with disgust, rose, and gathered up the stack of books. “Thank you, Professor Van Meyer,” he said. “I promise that they will be returned to you in their present condition.” Namely, unread by me, Snape thought.

“Very good,” Dumbledore said. “Now, Severus, I believe you wanted a word?”

“To put it mildly,” Snape muttered.

“And I have news for you as well. Shall we adjourn to my office?”

Dumbledore waved Snape on ahead of him, then announced to the room. “There will be a meeting of all teaching staff immediately after dinner,”—there was a chorus of groans—“and in the meantime, I’ll need someone to inform Sybill that the scrying stations she’s set up around the castle will have to come down. Peeves has tipped three of them over already…which means, I suppose, that someone will also have to inform Filch. We don’t want the students starting out the term with wet feet.”

*******

Fawkes let out a single low note as Snape and Dumbledore entered the headmaster’s office, and the latter stroked his familiar fondly. “Missed me, did you?” he murmured. The bird bowed its head and leaned into his hand.

Snape found that he could not bear to watch the exchange, and so he looked away. He wondered if the bird knew.

“Please, do sit down, Severus. By the way, I haven’t seen it myself, but your redecoration of the Defence classroom must really be something; it gave Fleagle quite a scare.”

“Fleagle?”

“One of the house-elves,” Dumbledore explained calmly. “Does the odd errand for me. I believe his regular job is emptying the bins and chamber pots.”

“Right,” Snape said, unsure of how to proceed. “Ah, Headmaster, did you receive my recent messages?”

“Yes.”

Snape waited, schooling his features to reflect patience, while his mind screamed, Yes? And? AND…? Dumbledore said nothing further, however. He fixed his blue eyes on Snape and subjected him to such intense scrutiny that Snape was hard-pressed not to fidget like a schoolboy.

At last the headmaster spoke again. “Your first request will not be a problem. Vance has been tearing her hair out waiting for reassignment. She’s just coming to terms with, well, the terms of the arrangement…with regards to her new appearance. I think she was hoping to choose for herself.”

“I know it seems odd, Headmaster, but I have it on good authority that Mr. Blye is very particular on that point.”

“Oh, I believe you, Severus. But Vance was on detail at Downing Street during the 1980s, you know, and she wasn’t very fond of that administration. It’s a bit hard for her to swallow.”

“We must all make sacrifices,” Snape said, unable to suppress a little smile. The exact words Mrs. Mountbatten-Woolley-St. John-Blye had used to describe her stepson’s predilection were, “tarted-up version of Margaret Thatcher.”

“Hmm,” Dumbledore said, eyes narrowing. “Somehow I don’t think Ms Vance would appreciate that comment, given that she’s already died for your sake, more or less.”

Snape stopped smiling.

“I’ve told her all I know, but you’ll need to fill her in on the details. Use Fawkes for any deliveries. Once she’s emerged, you should avoid meeting in person unless it is absolutely necessary.” Dumbledore pulled a quill out of an inkpot, scribbled something on a scrap of parchment, and slid it across his desk toward Snape with his withered hand. “But if you need to speak to her, you can do so the Muggle way, at that number. Ask for Ms McMeeve.”

Snape plucked the scrap of parchment from the desk, folded it without looking at it, and slipped it into his sleeve. He searched Dumbledore’s face for some clue as to his sudden terse, businesslike mood. Such moods never boded well for Snape. An uneasy feeling settled in his stomach.

“As to your second request,” Dumbledore went on, placing the quill to one side and stopping up the inkpot. “I’m sorry, but my answer is no.”

“But, Albus—”

“I will not discuss it further, Severus!” Dumbledore held up his good hand. His voice was stern, commanding. “Harry cannot be involved at this stage. It is inappropriate, and it would risk everything. You’ll just have to find some other way.”

The uneasy feeling in Snape’s stomach turned to hot, bitter resentment. He clenched his hands in his lap. “Just what do—”

“Besides,” Dumbledore interrupted, “you seem to be making fine progress. I looked in on the basin last week during a security check. The contents have thickened.”

Snape snorted. “Which will mean sod all if I can’t push this further, if I can’t get her to trust me enough to—”

“That,” Dumbledore broke in for the third time, “is why I asked Professor Van Meyer to lend you those books. I thought they might be just the thing.”

Snape stared incredulously at his employer. Did Dumbledore really think that a few books on Muggle social relations could solve his Dursley dilemma? It was going to be a miracle if Snape could scrape the odd weekend visit to Surrey once term began. He could write letters, and he could send Vance to work on his behalf, but he was not so vain (nor so stupid) as to think that either could win him a permanent place in Petunia Dursley’s affections. He needed an edge. He’d spent a long while considering just what that edge might be, too, before asking for it.

“I know you were brought up in a mixed household,” Dumbledore went on, “but you’ve never seemed very interested in the Muggle side of things, nor—forgive me for saying so—the social side of things, wizard or Muggle.”

Dumbledore peered over the tops of his glasses at Snape, as if asking for confirmation of these facts, but Snape remained silent, fuming.

“Some weeks ago,” Dumbledore continued, “Professor Van Meyer was regaling me with stories about all the little differences between our cultures—things we may not even be aware of, but that create misunderstandings when we interact with Muggles. I’ve no idea if there’s anything to it, but naturally I thought of you. I asked Professor Van Meyer to pull those together.” He nodded at the books on Snape’s lap. “I did intend for him to drop them off privately, in your office, of course; I know how gossip gets started.” He smiled, then pulled a stack of unopened owl post into the centre of the desk. “Now, was there anything else? I’m afraid I have a dozen uninteresting but vitally important things to do before dinner.”

“No,” Snape spat out. He stood. “And thank you for your time, Headmaster,” he said and stalked out of the room.

“I have faith in you, Severus,” Dumbledore called after him.

*******

Once he’d gained the privacy of his dungeon office, Snape threw Van Meyer’s books on the floor in frustration (so much for promises) and placed his hands on the desk, leaning on its solid bulk for support. He realised that he’d forgotten to ask Dumbledore about the memories, but he didn’t much care, he was that angry. He could see now that this mission was going to play out just like all the others—Dumbledore setting Snape a difficult task and then distancing himself (or deluding himself) about the means by which that task could be accomplished, about what it might cost.

Snape knew in some rational part of himself that this was what all successful leaders did, what they had to do in order to win, not just individual battles, but entire wars. No one he knew of had ever micromanaged his or her way to victory. But, for once, Snape was dead tired of being on the receiving end of Dumbledore’s faith, unaccompanied as it was by complete trust, unwavering support, and an honest acknowledgement of what Snape endured. Dumbledore had had faith that Snape would look out for Potter in his first year, hadn’t he? Then he’d had faith that Snape would manage Gilderoy Lockhart, assist Remus Lupin, and thwart Dolores Umbridge. And he’d even had bloody faith that Snape could go swanning back to the Dark Lord any time he chose, make nice with Sirius Black, and teach Potter Occlumency, all to the good! Granted, Dumbledore had since acknowledged that his expectations had been a tad unrealistic in the last two matters, but still…

Snape closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and reminded himself that banging any part of his anatomy against his desk was only a painful, temporary distraction. But then he drove his fist into the desk anyway. What if, this time round, Dumbledore was really trying to frustrate him on purpose? What if he was trying, as he had last year with Potter, to distance himself—not for safety’s sake, but to make things easier for Snape, when the time came?

IF the time comes, Snape reminded himself, and kicked the desk for good measure.

There was a great grumbling, splintering noise, and a deep voice said, “What say you leave us be and take it out on the chairs instead, m’laddo?”

“Quiet, you, or I’ll turn you into a footstool!” Snape shouted at his desk. He sank down onto the floor, head in his hands. One of Van Meyer’s books lay open near his left knee, and Snape gazed at it idly, wondering if Van Meyer would notice if he sprinkled the books liberally with Wartcap Powder before returning them. Then Snape began to read what was on the page, and a strangled cry escaped his lips.

Most simple non-electric (see Chapter Four) Muggle objects, it read, are inanimate and do not possess the capability for reason, observation, or speech. Attempting to interact with or give commands to such objects, then, is considered by most Muggles to be a sign of mental frailty. TIP: DO offer your Muggle guest a chair; DON’T shout at the chair to get a blooming move on and make itself useful.

*******

Snape spent the remainder of the afternoon in his office, ignoring Floo calls from his fellow Heads of House and one old-fashioned knock at the door (undoubtedly Filch). By the time he re-emerged for dinner, no one could have possibly guessed that he’d spent the last several hours threatening his furniture, abusing a fellow colleague’s property, and having a long, hard, mutinous think.

Someone who knew him intimately might have been able to tell—by the way he worried at his chop, harassed his peas, and slowly turned his roast potatoes into mashed—that he’d had a bad day, but there was no such person at Hogwarts. He was tolerated, needed, respected (and yes, even feared) to varying degrees by his colleagues, but no one really wanted to peel off the wrapper and get better acquainted. Which was just fine with Snape, as it made adhering to his newly clarified plan—to do what he thought needed to be done, to do it to the best of his ability, to have no regrets, and to remember that Dumbledore couldn’t possibly disapprove of (or be disappointed by) things he didn’t know about—all the easier.

By the time he stabbed his vanilla slice, Snape had a positively steely glint in his eye. The corners of his lips quirked upward as the custard oozed onto his plate. Another memory had bubbled to the surface of his mind, but not—thank Merlin—one about his mum or his dad or his days in short pants. No, he’d just remembered another of Wilkes’ common room acts, typically belted out after the consumption of indecent quantities of Butterbeer:

“Do for yourself!” all the Slytherins holler.
Do for yourself; don’t wear any Crup’s collar.

We stand side by side, but we’re watching our backs,
For Salazar says to beware sneak attacks.

Do for yourself and the others will follow.
Do for yourself or defeat you must swallow.

Friend may turn foe in the blink of an eye;
The only one true is the one you call, “I.”

Do for yourself and your one true self only.
Do for yourself...or pay if you’re lonely!

*******