Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World-Chapter 4 - 3. Actor.

"Not bad, actually." Severus turned a page, genuinely interested. "They’ve compensated for the shortage of raw power by developing spells that run on very little of it, but still hit hard in a fight. Clever." He sighed and reached for another book. "Pity I can’t cast openly yet. The last thing I want is to draw attention, and a place like this almost certainly has tracking charms on underage casting." He held up the new volume. "History of the Wizarding World." The contents surfaced in his memory before he’d even opened it: a vast tangle of lessons and textbooks the original Severus had absorbed while staring across the room at a red-haired girl, most of it taken in without any apparent effort on his part. For an Archmage, that kind of passive absorption cost nothing.

"Interesting. Over a thousand years old, and founded by people who were at least Magisters. There has to be something hidden here. In my world, plenty of old men on their deathbeds left things behind so their names would outlast them. I should dig into the history, see what turns up." The book drifted out of his hands and settled back on the shelf. "Start with Slytherin’s founder. I’ve got two years, and those four hid something in this school. If memory serves, Salazar had a thing for snakes, spoke their language, kept a basilisk as a pet." He paused, smirking at his own train of thought.

"No. That’s ridiculous. He couldn’t have left a creature like that inside a school. Never mind the Muggle-borns; half the noble families in Britain send their children here. No one with the cunning to found Slytherin House would leave a giant killing machine in the walls just because he liked snakes." He pulled out a biography of Slytherin, but Severus’s memories surged up before he’d cracked the spine: full contents, annotations, related texts. "Am I going to learn anything new in this section at all? He’s apparently already read everything."

He shelved the book, stood looking at it for a moment, then turned and walked out of the Restricted Section.

I need to actually sort through these memories properly. Running into them blind is a mess. Tonight. And I should call on Slughorn; he seems sane enough, and I think we can work with each other.

It was half past six when Severus left the library. Two and a half hours until his meeting with the Head of House. He used the time to review what he’d pulled from the memories about Slughorn: temperament, preferences, pressure points. He also went back over Severus’s habits, his gestures, the particular rhythms of his speech. One careless slip in front of a professor who’d known the real boy for years and the whole thing unravelled. He had no illusions about standing up to the staff here, whatever rank he’d held in his own world. His Archmage power meant nothing without the core to back it up. The simple offensive spells he’d barely bothered to learn, only a few dozen, and even those were far too taxing for this body. First priority: adapt. Learn to survive on what he had.

Two hours later.

He’d worked through enough of the memories to feel settled, and he left the room in a considerably lighter mood.

When he walked into the common room, a voice called out, and it belonged to the same boy who’d backed him up in front of Slughorn.

"Not a bad showing today. And I see you’ve finally stopped keeping Gryffindor company."

"You’re right. Not the best crowd."

"Glad to hear it. Even if we drop five points today, pulling fifty from Gryffindor hurts them a great deal more than it hurts us." Macmillan gave him a satisfied pat on the shoulder.

"What makes you think we’ll lose any?" Severus raised an eyebrow, already glancing at the clock on the wall. "Let’s talk later. Slughorn’s expecting me."

"Of course. Any trouble, come and find me." Macmillan touched the prefect badge on his chest with a certain pride.

"I’ll remember that."

The moment Severus disappeared around the corner, Macmillan turned the exchange over in his mind, then headed the other way, toward the hall where the house hourglasses stood: tall columns of glass filled with precious stones rather than sand, each one tallying the points of a house.

A few minutes later Severus knocked at Slughorn’s office door.

"Come in, Severus."

The office was done in dark green, much like the common room. Two tall cabinets flanked the walls in one corner, one stuffed with books and one with potion ingredients. Between them stood a table, and behind it Slughorn smiled at the young man coming through the door.

"Sit down. Tea?"

"No, thank you." Severus settled opposite him. "The word, Professor. Did you look it up?"

Slughorn smiled warmly and nodded.

"As it happens, you were right: it isn’t officially classified as an insult. But I still want you to stop using it with Miss Evans, or with anyone else from a Muggle background. Official classification aside, it causes real offence."

"Understood, Professor. I won’t use it again."

"Good. Glad to hear it." Slughorn took a sip from the glass at his elbow and let his expression settle into something more serious. "Now. What’s happened to you?"

There it is. Don’t give anything away. Then a faint sweetness pricked at the back of his throat, and his thoughts went briefly soft at the edges. Veritaserum. Of course. I’ve been too obvious. He stripped the effect from his system without expression. "Professor, you didn’t need to do that. You taught us yourself: always be on your guard with a skilled potion-maker. And I respect you too much to lie to you."

Slughorn wasn’t surprised. He’d only half expected the potion to work; this had been a test more than anything. Removing Veritaserum that quickly took real ability, and only a handful of people in the country could manage it. One of them was apparently sitting across from him. He gave an almost invisible nod.

"Fair enough. Then tell me what happened between you and Miss Evans. I was quite certain you were in love with her."

"I’d rather not go into it at length. But the short version is: she betrayed me. Twice." The sad smile that went with those words was entirely convincing.

Slughorn felt a prickle of discomfort. He had briefly entertained the idea that someone else was wearing this boy’s face, but something as ordinary as heartbreak hadn’t crossed his mind. In retrospect, Severus’s behaviour made a great deal more sense. Horace knew about the incident after one of the exams, when the Marauders had strung Severus up by his ankle and his robe had fallen, exposing him to half the school. He knew about the other incidents too, the casual, grinding cruelty that Slughorn had tried and failed to stop, offering help each time and being refused. He would have sorted the Marauders out himself if he’d been able to, but the Ministry would have had him out on his ear for it, possibly worse. All he could do was dock points and set detentions, which was, in the grand scale of things, not very much at all.

"Is that so..." Slughorn began, but Severus wasn’t finished.

"When I actually sat down and thought about it, I realised I’d been letting everyone walk over me for years. I loved Lily. And she used that, kept me on a lead like some dog she was fond of." He looked straight at Slughorn with an expression that made the old man very uncomfortable indeed. "And then she went to him. My enemy. The one who’s been making my life a misery since first year, who humiliated me in front of half the school. She even passed on a spell I invented. Tell me, Professor, what exactly am I supposed to feel about that?" His voice had climbed to something close to a shout. Slughorn sat very still, at a complete loss.

"Severus, I..."

"I’m sorry for the outburst, Professor. I should go." He stood and walked to the door without looking back.

Slughorn watched him go and thought about calling him back, then thought better of it.

Better to let him be for now. Cool down. He took a long sip of wine, steadying himself. In thirty-odd years of teaching he’d never sat across from anything quite like this, and he wasn’t sure he’d handled it well at all. I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Properly, this time.

(Note: In Severus’s world of origin, the ranks of mages ascend as follows: apprentice, journeyman, master, magister, Archmage, Great Archmage, Creator. The British Ministry of Magic is the principal governing body of the wizarding world, existing primarily to prevent Muggles from learning of its existence. Its authority rests on the Statute of Secrecy, which governs all relations between the magical and Muggle worlds, including conduct, dress, and conduct near Muggles. Article 73 of the Statute specifically governs interactions with magical creatures.)

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