Arithmancy for Muggles

Chapter Eight: Defenseless

Snape was careful not to sit near Vector during staff meetings, lest he be tempted to share snide thoughts with her during the proceedings and reveal their tentative alliance. Positioned between Binns and Flitwick, he contemplated the nigh-indestructable carpet slippers still protecting his feet. He’d been wearing them for weeks and they still looked as fresh as the moment he’d put them on. Sure, they clashed with the sober black of his robes, but they were comfortable and seemed to resist potion stains of all kinds.

Clearing his throat to speak, Albus Dumbledore stood. “As you all know, after that unfortunate mishap last week, we are again considering new applicants for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. Professor Snape and I will be interviewing candidates tomorrow and we hope to have our final choice made before exams begin. In the meantime, please excuse all DADA-related scheduling tardies. We have a limited number of time turners and the Board of Governors has requested a special emphasis on Defense, though as we know, the greatest threat has passed.”

After this announcement, the headmaster reopened scusscussion of old business. Filch complained again that teachers were not issuing detentions with the same fervor as they once had and he had a backlog of toilets to clean. He looked pointedly at Snape, who pretended not to notice. After the old business was taken care of, several of the staff had new business to discuss. Snape closed his eyes and let the meeting proceed without him. All concluded more or less satisfactorily, teachers began gathering their things to go or pouring a second cup of tea and negotiating for more comfortable seats by the fire. Binns just drifted away.

“Ah, Severus?” The headmaster sat down in Binns’ vacant chair without waiting for an answer. “About the interviews tomorrow...”

Turning lazily, Snape arched an eyebrow in Dumbledore’s direction. “Yes?”

“There, there. I know how much you have always wanted the Defense position. But you know I can’t possibly spare you on PotioYou You understand that?” Albus Dumbledore patted Snape’s hand in an avuncular manner, his eyes twinkling gently behind his spectacles.

Snape smiled in that way Vector had insisted was unnatural. Dumbledore jerked his hand away.

“Yes, well,” the old man recovered his distracted dignity quickly. “About tomorrow. I’m afraid we only have one serious candidate, but I’m certain he’s the right wizard for the job. However, he’s had a bit of a rough time recently, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d bear that in mind during the interview. So, please, as a favor to me: no scare tactics, no theatrics, just fair questions on the job at hand.”

“Why not just hire Potter without the interview, if it’s such a formality? The Board of Governors will never know unless you tell them.”

If he was surprised at Snape’s accurate guess, Dumbledore made no outward sign. The dotty despot smiled gently. “I think it will do the two of you good to talk. Be merciful. Make peace with the boy. He needs somewhere safe to recover, just as you did. Would you deny him the chances you were given?”

“Of course not, Albus.” Snape patted Dumbledore’s hand, just as the old man had patted his a moment before. “Don’t you worry your wispy white little head about it, I’ll treat Potter with all the same mercy you showed me.”

“At least, be polite, Severus.” Snape could see his barb had hit the mark. “I’ll send him to your office tomorrow after your last class.”

Smiling again, Snape stood. “Of course, Albus. Just send him down to me. He knows the way.” Shuffling out of the teacher’s lounge in his purple carpet slippers, Snape wondered what Potter thought of Albus arranging his life for him, as Albus had arranged so many lives. Though immensely grateful that Albus was on his side during the worst Voldemort years, Snape’s gratitude was wearing thin.

Now that the threat from Voldemort was gone, Snape could see the changeless years stretching ahead of him, the relentless grind of the scholastic year, year upon year. Perhaps like Binns, his ghost would remain at Hogwarts to teach even after he was dead. Another ghost member of faculty would save the school enough money to provide a nice parting bonus for whoever taught the DADA position. DADA teachers always seemed to need extra hospital treatments or funerals by the end of the term.

Perhaps it was best he never had the opportunity to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, Snape mused after the next day\'s disastrous potions class. He tossed the smoking rag that had once been his teaching robe onto the floor of his office. His slippers had escaped unscathed, yet again. If he came this close to death teaching a relatively innocuous potion, how could he ever hope to survive a whole term of Dark Arts?

He’d nearly forgotten the pointless interview with Potter when the young man in question rapped hesitantly on the door.

“Enter!” Snape had his back to the door, his shirtsleeves rolled up as he attempted to repair the damage done to his k cok coat. Though his robes had soaked up most of the dangerously acidic potion, his coat had several noticeable holes, growing larger by the moment as the solution weakened the wool fibers and encouraged them to unravel. Frustrated, he turned around with a scowl on his face to confront Mr. Harry Potter.

Harry cringed in the doorway, shaking worse than the late unlamented Quirrell. However, the young man in question was not wearing a turban. Dark greasy hair fell in limp tangles over his forehead. “Dumbledore said I was to talk to you?” His voice, grown rich and deep with adulthood, sounded weak and reedy. His brilliant green eyes, once so clearly fearless, darted nervously around the office.

“Yes. Please, have a seat.” Snape gestured to the uncomfortable guest chair. It was the only chair in the office without a slowly disintegrating frock coat flung over the back. “I’m sorry I cannot entertain you in better style, but the fourth years are up to their usual tricks.”

“I- I- I’m sorry.” Harry stammered and sat gingerly on the edge of the seat.

Snape noticed the young man’s complexion was nearly as sallow as his own. He was a pitiful specimen, trembling like a mouse that had been inexpertly transfigured from a serving of blancmange. The great Harry Potter, saviour of the Wizarding World, was a nervous wreck.

In a rare attempt at a compassionate gesture, Snape snorted and flapped his hands at the younger man. “Never mind. This is a formality anyway. Dumbledore says the job is yours if you want it. We can kill an hour just as easily over a bottle of Old Ogden’s as we can in a pointless question and answer session.”

“B-b-but my q-q-qualifications?” He watched, confused, as Snape tossed the smoking garment over his shoulder and locked his desk.

“What did you care about qualifications when you led Dumbledore’s Army?” Snape’s slippers thwacked softly against the floor as he walked across the office. “Come on. I’ve got a bottle in my rooms.” He twisted the ear of the bronze statue of Hermes to open the door to his private chamber.

Harry frowned slightly, but followed the older man through the door. “Uh, Professor Snape?” he asked quietly as the door closed behind him. “What are you wearing on your feet?”

Snape looked down at his feet. “Purple carpet slippers.” He lit a fire against the growing chill and pulled a dusty bottle from behind a large clock on the mantelpiece. “Neat? Or shall I put the kettle on as well? A little nip of firewhisky in your tea will set you to rights again.”

Truthfully, Harry’s appearance had shaken Snape considerably. Potter had always been a pain in his arse, but he was a familiar pain, like the twinge of sciatica that signals the approaching storm. To see him so reduced was, to say the least, unsettling.

“I doubt firewhisky is going to fix what’s wrong with me, Professor Snape.” Harry sat on the edge of one of the two wingback chairs drawn up by the fire, and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he watched Snape hunting for glasses.

“Can it hurt?” Snape asked.

“Probably not,” Harry admitted and leaned back, letting the chair swallow him. From the depths of the chair Harry asked, “Why are you wearing purple carpet slippers?”

“So that my feet don’t get cold,” Snape replied calmly, finding two glasses of more or less the same size and swiping them across his sleeve to dust. Old Ogden’s would kill any contaminant that might lurk within. “And what is wrong with you that firewhisky will not fix?”

Harry let silence reign for long moments. Snape occupied himself, pouring two stiff shots of firewhisky into the glasses and handing one to his guest.

“What happened to your coat?” Harry asked, avoiding any discussion of his stay at St. Mungo’s.

“De-intigration potion. I have a pupil in my fourth year class who makes Neville Longbottom look as smooth as Gilderoy Lockhart.” Wisps of smoke emanated from the dark lump still flung over Snape’s shoulder.

“Let me,” Harry insisted, brandishing his wand. He spoke a word that shook the coat out and reformed it before folding it neatly and dropping it on a nearby table. When he was done, the young wizard hissed and grimaced, putting his wand away.

“What have you done, Potter?”

“It’s nothing, just an elaborate repair charm,” Harry waved him away.

But Snape was persistent, reaching out to examine the younger man’s hand. \"Not the charm, your hand.\" Where Harry’s skin had touched the wand, blisters were beginning to form. “What is ?”
?”

“The mediwitch said it’s nothing to worry about,” Harry insisted. “She says it happens sometimes. They think I’m trying to use too much power at once and my wand can’t absorb it fast enough. The mediwitch suggested trying a new wand, but I just can’t...”

Snape watched Harry Potter dissolve into tears, sitting upright in the wingback chair. Normally Snape enjoyed dropping acid comments into other people’s calm milk of complacency and watching them curdle. But Snape hadn’t caused this. He did not find this entertaining. This was heartbreaking. Snape refused to let Harry Potter break his heart. That task was reserved for Hermione.

Using the hunt for a deflating draught and a healing ointment as a cover, Snape turned his back on the embarrassing display of emotion. When Harry’s tears had mostly dried and he was only sniffling gently into his sleeve, Snape returned to tend the other wizard’s blisters.

“If you’re having such a difficult time, do you really think it’s wise to take the DADA position?” Snape knelt before his guest and daubed deflating draught over the blisters, watching them shrink.

“Dumbledore said I needed to work, to take my mind off... things.”

Shaking his head, Snape corked the deflating draught and sponged a little ointment over the site, healing the deflated white flesh, making it pink and rosy and whole again, like fresh skin under a broken scab. “Dumbledore has said many things in his career as Hogwarts headmaster, things like ‘oddment’ and ‘tweak’ and other such nonsense. I wouldn’t take that as career advice.” Standing, Snape loomed over his former pupil. “Take the DADA job because you want it, not because Dumbledore says you need it.”

“I don’t really want to teach Dark Arts,” Harry confessed. “I’m afraid of the dark.”

Returning the potions to his small personal stock, Snape dignified Harry’s revelation with a thoughtful hum.

“What do you think I should do?”

Snape raised his eyebrow and speared Harry with a look best used on recalcitrant students who should have known better. “I think you should make up your own mind.”

“I could teach potions. You could teach DADA.” Harry offered the exchange blithely.

“And what makes you think you’re qualified to teach potions?” Snape was back, his sarcastic question meant to send Hesitant Harry cringing back into his chair.

It had the desired effect. “B-b-but you s-s-said earlier tha-tha-that my ificific-c-cations didn’t m-matter?”

A gentle sigh and Snape sank into his own chair. “Harry, if you can’t face up to me asking a very sensible question, how are you going to teach even first year DADA, let alone more advanced subjects? What are you going to do if a boggart gets out of hand?”

“L-l-l-laugh?” Harry grimaced weakly.

Snape had to keep reminding himself that this sad wreck of a man was The Harry Potter, brave Gryffindor, the boy who lived to defeat Voldemort in fulfillment of a prophecy.

Hermione’s arithmantic charts featured him as a small purple square listed simply as H. The hopes of witches and wizards everywhere might depend on that small purple square being in the right place at the right time to rally the magical community. Right now, Harry Potter couldn’t rally a snappy comeback, let alone a crowd of apathetic wizards.

“Harry,” Severus said as gently as he could, “you’re a mess. How long has it been since you’ve slept? Bathed? When did you last eat a good meal?”

Harry didn’t answer for a long time. “Perhaps I should owl Hermione. She can do some arithmancy and tell me what I should do.\"

Hermione would probably tell him the same thing Snape had: make up your own mind. She wasn’t going to take responsibility for fixing his life. But, like the firewhisky, owling Hermione probably wouldn’t hurt. “Why don’t you do that? I’m sure she’d love to hear from you. Did you owl her at all from St. Mungo’s? Does she even know you were, ah, taking a cure?”

Shaking his head, Harry admitted he had not. “I didn’t want to worry her. She’s been under so much pressure from the Ministry, I didn’t want to upset her.”

“Ah. The report.”

“But how did you…?”

Now, thought Snape, was the time to drop acid into Harry\'s milk. “I met with her the day the Ministry snapped her wand.”

Harry lunged out of the chair. “They did what?” His voice rose indignantly, cracking on the last word.

“I’m sorry. I thought she had spoken with you about it.” Snape nodded absently, wondering if Dumbledore felt like this much of a fraud every time he dropped a crucial piece of information into a discussion as if by accident, and if he did it simply to see what kind of reaction he would get. Harry\'s reaction to the news was interesting. If Hermione hadn\'t told Harry about the threat to her position, why had she revealed it all to her former professor that last day in Diagon Alley?

“She told me about her boss wanting her to change the report, but she didn’t say anything about the M-m-ministry wanting to s-s-snap her wand.” Harry subsided. “Wha-what happened?” He let his shaking knees bend, and sat once more.

Snape told Harry the tale, much as Hermione had told it to him. “She decided that the best course of action would be to let them snap her wand and exit Wizarding society gracefully. Her plan was to regroup, keep updating her report based on information passed to her by concerned witches and wizards, and return when she could present a workable solution to the problem.”

The look of suspicious confusion on Harry’s face would have been a delight at any other time. “Why do you know so much about this?”

“I told you. I met Hermione in Diagon Alley after they’d snapped her wand.” Snape told as much of the truth as he wanted Harry to hear, nothing more. “She told me what had happened and I offered to give her a nice dinner, as a sort of farewell. She told me all about it then.”

“You mean, you asked her to dinner, and she said yes?” Harry knocked back his firewhisky and held his glass out for a refill.

Snape could barely contain his smile. “She said yes.” He poured another two fingers of Old Ogden’s into Harry’s glass. “She also said she didn’t want to worry you. Hermione alluded to some trouble you’d been having.”

“She didn’t tell you?” This time, Harry sipped. Snape shook his head. “I’m afraid.” He waited for the big reaction.

Unwilling to gratify him, Snape arched an eyebrow. “Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Harry’s voice cracked again. “I’m the world’s only Gryffindor coward!”

“A Gryffindor who admits fear? There’s hope for you yet, Potter.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

Snape felt like he was repeating himself. He’d had a similar conversation with Hermione, hadne? “e? “Minerva McGonagall felt no fear. Her fearlessness made her stupid, careless. She would still be alive today if she’d been afraid.” Snape topped off his own glass and sipped again. “Fear is useful. You Griffindors keep mixing up courage and fearlessness. A man without fear isn’t courageous, he’s a fool.”

Staring into his glass, Harry frowned. “But I’m afraid of nearly everything these days. Crowds, loneliness, fire, the darkness, too much sunlight, heights, enclosed spaces, loud noises...” he sighed, “long silences.”

“Is there anything of which you are not afraid?” Snape’s tone was clinical, dispassionate, as if he didn’t care what the answer might be. He sipped his whisky calmly, waiting patiently.

“Voldemort,” Harry finally said in a whisper. “I am not frightened of Voldemort.”

“Why not?”

“He died.” Harry looked up, meeting Snape’s eyes. “I saw him die.”

“Hundreds of people saw him die,” Snape reminded.

Shaking his head, Harry elaborated. “No, I mean, I saw him die. I was with him as his...” he searched for the right words. “I saw his soul, his spirit, his self, that part of him that was not a body. I was with him as we rose up, out of this shell,” he gestured to his unwashed, unkempt self, “into the light. Voldemort was stripped away, like rotten layers of an onion. I saw his anger and his ugliness disintegrate and drift away like wisps of smoke in the sunlight. Tom Riddle, too, let go of his fear, his pain, his unfulfilled longings. Layer by layer, the darkness was flayed from his soul, until I could see his heart, his center, shining like a radiant pearl: glowing, luminescent, transcendent. And in the center of the pearl was a diamond that blazed like a distant star. He was beautiful. In that moment, I loved him utterly. I knew what my mother must have felt for me when she died.”

Tears filled Harry’s eyes, but did not fall.

“But I did not die, he did. He went away, and I came back, back through the smoke and confusion, the pain, the heartache, the longing and the tears, to live again. And now I am afraid.” Harry sank back into the chair.

Snape sipped his whisky, wondering what on earth he was going to say to Dumbledore about this meeting.