A Matter of Black and White

DISCLAIMER: This story is based upon the works of JK Rowling. Anything you recognize is hers. I’m making no money off of this. I’m just having some fun adding my own little corner to the amazing world she has already created.

AN: Here’s a short chapter to keep everyone occupied while I continue getting settled in my new home.

* * *

CHAPTER 17—CONCESSIONS

At their next lesson, she brought a thermos of tea. He had lit a fire.

They skipped the perfunctory niceties and insults and dove straight into work. Despite their unspoken agreement to ignore the residual awkwardness from their last several nerve-rending sessions, one repercussion of their most recent encounter was evident: the lessons were taking on a new structure—one with actual focus. It seemed that Severus had come to appreciate the advantages of having her more fully trained if he didn’t want her getting trapped inside his mind anymore.

He surprised her no small bit the first time he announced an actual objective to a lesson—to explore and guard her thoughts about Muggles. “You grew up hating them,” he said. “Something must have changed.”

Aurora considered all the transformations that had taken place in the years after her arrival at Schönengrund. “I suppose the biggest thing was my Uncle Albert.”

“The Muggle?”

“Yes, he was a toymaker. My Aunt Ebba loved him because he still believed in magic. For a Muggle that requires a special kind of faith and innocence, the sort that usually only children have. They were things she’d forgotten could exist while she was growing up with the Kiebitzeis.”

“You were fond of your uncle?”

“Not at first, no. I treated him like a stray house-elf to begin with. But he had his own kind of magic, and I did learn to love him until….”

Severus arched his eyebrows, waiting for more.

“For awhile, I simply tolerated Muggles or accepted them on an individual basis. I suppose I learned that they weren’t the vermin I had first thought them to be, but I never really questioned the bigotry I grew up with either. It wasn’t until I was a second year at Beauxbatons that I actually came to understand what all that prejudice really meant.” She took a deep breath and paused to pour some tea into the thermos mug. “My uncle was diagnosed with cancer—inoperable by Muggle standards but easily curable with magical medicine. He died because no Swiss Healer would treat him. The nation’s medical system refuses to provide care for non-magical persons, and no other country would take him because he wasn’t their citizen.” Her words were steamrolling now into a sermon. “It’s the same sort of policy that keeps the Swiss Ministry from fighting the Dark Lord. Their neutrality isn’t about peace; it’s about not giving a damn about anyone outside its own population.”

Severus leaned back, his fingertips pressed together as he observed the way her indignation built up until she was shaking with it. “I see this is a sufficiently emotional memory for you.” While he made no attempt to mask his disdain for this reaction, he miraculously managed not to dwell on it either. “As it is, it is inappropriate to reveal to the Dark Lord. Perhaps if you were capable,” he added, “of reflecting upon your Muggle uncle’s death with satisfaction, it would be useful….”

Her eyes grew wide in horror at this thought.

“…But of course you are not,” he said briskly. “Therefore you should protect thoughts of him with less savory experiences with Muggles. The memory at your new school would suffice.”

Subtle jibes at her continuing limitations aside, the lesson from there on out actually went better than expected. Severus went seeking her loving memories with her uncle, while she tried to channel her original dark thoughts about him and the rest of his Muggle neighbors. She didn’t quite manage success right away, but her patience with the process was dramatically increased now that she had a definable goal—to keep showing him the memory of Monika and Sabine and to channel all that loathing her child self had directed toward her Muggle classmates. It was enough to get them through the next several weeks of lessons with little more than the occasional waspish comment. Like it or not, she might just learn Mentior Occlumency yet.

* * *

It was a few days before the students arrived, and the staff were starting to get their usual frantic looks that they wore at the beginning of every year. Syllabi had yet to be written, books yet to be ordered, classrooms yet to be arranged. As a result, the teachers were arriving perpetually later and later to each meal so that the house-elves had taken to serving food precisely twelve minutes after meals were supposed to begin. Snape didn’t see why punctual people’s stomachs should be punished for the tardiness of those individuals whose own fault it was for procrastinating with their lesson plans. He probably should have adjusted his own arrival to the Great Hall accordingly, but arriving that awkward twelve minutes after the hour made him feel as if he were running distressingly late or disagreeably early for something.

As it was, showing up on time allowed him the opportunity to engage in the absurdly gratifying pastime of playing Let’s See Who Gets Stuck Sitting Next to Snape. It would have been a masochistic sport had he not gotten to enjoy the strained look of disappointment in whatever latecomer realized that the only seats left were on either side his or her least favorite colleague. Sprout had already gotten stuck on his left because she needed to talk with Flitwick, who was seated a space away from him. Apparently the Herbology teacher needed her tiny colleague to cast an extra-powerful Sunlight Charm over the greenhouses to counteract all the cloud cover as of late. Snape hadn’t needed Legilimency to read the woman’s mind when she had realized that she would have to dine next to Hogwarts’ most disagreeable professor if she wanted to talk with Flitwick. She had definitely been calculating how much longer she could let her precious Flutterby Bushes go without the Sunlight Charm before they shriveled up and died. Typical Hufflepuff that she was, though, she had at least managed to give him a weak greeting before turning her chair and casting her attention upon Flitwick.

There were now only two places left at the table and two professors left to take them—Aurora and the Muggle Studies teacher, Jane Dunot. The question now was simply which lucky lady would arrive next to steal the last available place far away from Severus Snape, which today was the corner spot next to Slughorn, who was currently talking Hooch’s ear off about Gwenog Jones. Snape had his bets placed on Dunot. Aurora was probably fretting about what to wear down to dinner, though Merlin knew all her robes looked the same anyway. Besides, Dunot was petrified of him and usually made a point of not arriving so late that she would have to sit anywhere near him.

By the time the door to the Great Hall finally cracked open, Snape had placed 2:1 odds that the Muggle Studies teacher would come slinking in, trying her best to look invisible as she made her way up the long open aisle to the staff table. It was a good thing that he didn’t have anyone with whom to wager, though, because when the door opened more widely, he saw a witch in white who strode confidently across the room.

Oh well, it would be more entertaining to make Dunot quiver over her pudding anyway.

Halfway across the Great Hall, Aurora was already giving perky little waves to her colleagues, who greeted her like she was the most popular girl in school. She paused in front of Dumbledore to say good evening to the Headmaster and then cast a look to her left and right to find a place to sit. To her right, Slughorn grinned broadly from under his walrus mustache and patted the chair next to him. Snape could only imagine the good fortune Aurora must be feeling knowing that her late arrival had not kept her from dining with Hogwarts most well-connected professor. Slughorn had certainly taken a shine to her, and Snape imagined plenty of crystallized pineapples in their future.

Maybe there was some anti-gravity mist in the air and she had her directions backwards. Maybe she just wanted a word with Flitwick or Sprout before dinner. Either way, Snape nearly choked on his pumpkin juice when Aurora didn’t go skipping off toward her mustached fan. Instead, she slipped into the seat next to him and muttered under her breath, “Thank Holda there was a place left.”

Snape arched an eyebrow. “That is not a comment I hear everyday, at least not from anyone left sitting next to me.”

At that moment, Dunot crept into the Great Hall and cast an apprehensive glance toward the nearly full staff table. When she realized that the one place remaining was next to Slughorn rather than Snape, her usually colorless face actually glowed with relief.

“See, that’s the reaction people are supposed to have when they realize they needn’t suffer my company.”

Aurora cast a dark look down the table toward Slughorn. “I’ll take my chances with you, thanks.”

Hmm, maybe she had had a run-in with a Confundus Charm rather than some anti-gravity mist. Why in the world wouldn’t she be clambering to get close to Hogwarts’ kingmaker of social status? “Feeling humbled next to all the Slug Club success stories, are we?”

“Let’s just say slugs give me the creeps.”

“I would’ve thought you enjoyed the attention, given your taste for popularity.”

She ignored his stinging reference back to the memory of teasing her Beauxbatons classmate in the fountain. “Is his…attention…quite like that with the students too?”

“Like what?”

“Like he always has an ulterior motive, like it’s about one step away from getting him locked up in some countries.”

“He was the former Head of Slytherin, you know. We’re born with ulterior motives.”

“I don’t know, Severus,” she said, lifting the lid of a platter to see what was for dinner. “You seem to wear your motives on your sleeve—equal nastiness for all.” The silver pot of soup into which she was now dipping a ladle reflected an impish twinkle of her eyes. “Isn’t that your motto? Besides, in a way, that’s kinder than what Horace does. Just look at Jane now.”

Aurora nodded down the table. In Dunot’s relief at having avoided dining with Snape, the Muggle Studies teacher had actually managed to squeak a friendly greeting to Slughorn. The new Potions professor, however, had given the drab little woman nothing more than a barefaced look of disappointment and had thrown another look of longing down the table toward Aurora. He had since turned his attention back to Hooch, the velvet wall of his back blocking Dunot completely out of the conversation.

Yes, Snape knew from experience, that was Slughorn at his sluggiest.

“So that’s how you got stuck with me, Severus,” Aurora said before starting into her soup. “It was a choice between the lesser of two Slytherins.”

* * *

AN: Hmm, some tentative steps at least toward not hating each other. Can it last?

Thanks for your patience as I got unpacked and back into the technological age. It was a creepy thing when I realized I had neither a phone nor the internet connected. It felt more like roughing it than if I had been camped out under the stars.

To answer a few questions that have been popping up, I am veering from the popular consensus that Tobias Snape was a mill worker because we have no hard and fast evidence from the canon, just conclusions we can draw from the setting of Spinner’s End, which may or may not even be Severus’s childhood home. It’s enough uncertainty to merit a little creative exploring of alternative histories of Tobias Snape. As for the cassock, well, he’s not Anglican or Catholic or any mainstream sect, but we’ll see a bit more on that later.

As for some timeline affairs, Aurora was born and her parents joined up with Voldy in 1966. This would fall near the end of his travels and his mixing with the worst sort of wizards and near the start of the First War. I’d like to think that the Walpurgisnacht incident was one of his first times using the name Lord Voldemort in public. I think he was also getting some fashion ideas, etc., for the Death Eaters from the revels.