lomonaaeren

Part One.

Title: Runes, Stones, and Kingfishers (2/2)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Severus pre-slash
Content Notes: AU in that Severus lives, Headmaster Severus Snape, mild angst, humor
Wordcount: This part 4400
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This might have been a good week for Severus if an incompetent Ravenclaw student hadn’t managed to Transfigure himself into a kingfisher and get stuck that way, secret rooms weren’t suddenly being revealed all over Hogwarts, and the stones weren’t trying to eat snogging students, and if the Ministry didn’t think the right way to solve these problems was to send Auror Harry Potter to fix it.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year. It was written for goddess47’s request for Harry/Severus and Severus having a bad day as Headmaster, and will have two parts.

“Have you finished drawing that runic circle, Potter?”

“Almost, Snape.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. His continued lack of a title for Potter hadn’t had an effect other than to get Potter to address him the same way, by surname. Severus could have said that he was older and deserved the respect, but Potter would have given him another of those glances he was—

Unprepared for. That was the best name for it.

Potter was currently crouched in front of the largest stones muttering about eating students, all of them close to the floor and supporting the walls above. He had sketched a basic runic circle in chalk and was adding more and more intricate runes to it with sweeps of his wand instead of chalk held in the hand, only pausing now and then to consult the book open beside him. Severus was reluctantly impressed.

Not that it would do Potter’s swollen head any good to show it, of course.

Severus decided that he might as well not show it, and asked, “Where did you learn so much about runes?”

“Part of my training.” Potter was leaning back on his heels, stretching his arms above his head currently. He’d removed his Auror robes and hung them on one of the muttering stones, apparently because the magic generated by working with the circle would make him too warm. Potter arched and stretched some more, and his blue shirt slipped up his chest.

Severus hastily looked away.

“To handle disasters, you said. Runes are part of that?”

He let his skepticism show in his voice, because that would probably do Potter some good, but Potter just turned around and looked at him. It wasn’t even the same kind of glance as before, and yet Severus found himself turning away, unable to hold it. Perhaps Potter hadn’t changed. Perhaps he was the one becoming soft, without being in the classroom to intimidate students into behaving.

“Handling disasters means knowing the best way to defuse them,” Potter said, mildly enough. “Maybe that means dueling someone or bringing down a wall with brute strength, but it could also mean conducting a ritual or, yes, drawing a runic circle. And it’s expected of Head Aurors to handle situations of all sorts with grace.”

“You’re not Head Auror.” Surely he wasn’t. Severus might have tried to avoid any news of Potter in the past few years, but even he couldn’t have missed everyone in the Ministry going mad at once.

And if he had, somehow, then he was sure Minerva would have told him. Probably right at the moment when he was sipping the hottest tea the house-elves served in the morning.

“No, but I want to be.” Potter shrugged and bent over his runic circle again, but this time, despite knowing what kind of concentration Runes needed, Severus couldn’t let this go.

“You never showed that kind of ambition in school.”

“Why should I have? At the time, the thing I wanted most was to survive Voldemort trying to kill me, and my professors weren’t always the most inspiring.”

Severus glared at his turned back. Potter didn’t even bother looking up, but something that might have been a chuckle sounded as he spun his wand, and the chalk lines began moving and turning about him again. This would be a double-layered circle, Severus saw, presumably with the runes that would include the desire to speak with a stone on the inside, and then the outer layer of runes reversing that desire. Or perhaps the other way around.

“I could have done something with you as a student if you’d had the slightest amount of ambition,” Severus couldn’t help muttering.

Potter proved that he knew both how to draw Runes and carry on a conversation at the same time, which wasn’t fair. “If I’d displayed that ambition, you would have done your best to downplay it. And if I’d followed the logical course of it, then you would have been too busy having a heart attack to benefit either one of us.”

“What?”

Potter gave him that smile that had mischief at the back of it again. “The Sorting Hat wanted me in Slytherin.”

“What?”

Potter was very definitely enjoying himself, now. “Surprised?”

“Yes, of course! You—” But Severus stopped. If he accused Potter of lying now, he would be the one who looked childish, and not Potter. No matter how childish Potter actually was.

“I didn’t want to be in Slytherin because I’d already met Hagrid, who told me Voldemort used to be there, and Draco Malfoy, who convinced me that I didn’t want to share a House with him.” Potter shrugged and stood, moving to the center of the runic circle he’d drawn to repeat some of his motions, but not all of them. Severus found himself watching Potter’s shoulders and hands instead of his wandwork. Well, he had never understood Runes all that well, anyway. “I think now that it was a childish decision, and I might have gained some benefits from being in Slytherin. But I can’t know, and I’m content with what I am.”

“I would not have had a heart attack if you were placed in Slytherin.”

“No?” Potter peered at him doubtfully, one green eye beneath that messy fringe Severus was convinced he spelled unruly on purpose.

“Nothing so quiet. An attack of apoplexy, perhaps.”

Potter laughed, and Severus started at his own reaction to the sound. Luckily, Potter had turned back to his circles and didn’t appear to notice.

That is because there is nothing to notice. Nothing that anyone needs to notice.

Severus frowned through his mental voice’s lack of conviction, and turned his attention back strictly to the runes that Potter had drawn on the floor, trying to interpret them as best he might.

*

“I think we’re ready to begin.”

Potter stepped back from the outer line of the larger circle he’d drawn, and nodded to Minerva, who stood on the stairs that led up from the dungeons. “Professor McGonagall, can you ask Professor Babbling if she’s completed the circle she was going to draw to shield us from the possible effects if this goes wrong?”

“Oh, call me, Minerva, lad,” Minerva said, with a faint smile. “You’ve earned the right. And yes, I’ll ask her.” She turned and sent her cat Patronus stalking up the stairs and towards Bathsheda’s position in the entrance hall.

“If you ask to call me Severus,” Severus mused without looking at Potter, “there will be bloodshed.”

“Oh, I would never ask you. Sir.”

Severus only had time to glare at him once before Bathsheda’s fluttering moth Patronus returned with her answer. “Ready and waiting. Tell Mr. Potter that I can feel the impact of his runic circles from here, and they’re magnificent work!”

Yes, everyone wants to praise bloody Potter, Severus thought. It’s not enough to praise him for things he did in the past. Now everyone will be calling him the Savior of Hogwarts or some such nonsense, too.

Potter showed no sign of excessive ego at the praise, though, Severus had to admit. He merely raised his arms above his head and drew in a deep breath, and then flicked his wand and his empty left hand down at the same time, saying something in a long, hissing voice that sounded like the names of many runes blended together.

The circles flared, and the light that came from them seemed to sting the muttering stones into savagery. Suddenly they were chattering and shouting at the tops of their probably nonexistent lungs, and they all sounded mad. Severus slammed his hands over his ears, wincing. He looked forward to the moment when they stopped.

But, wait. No. They couldn’t stop until Potter had asked them how to retrieve the students they’d imprisoned.

Potter shouted something over the clamor, but with his hands over his ears, Severus couldn’t make out what it was. He did see Minerva frown. And then the runic circles twisted and broke apart into sparks and ashes that leaped up into the air and rushed towards them in a burning wind—

And slammed against an invisible barrier. That would be Bathsheda’s circle, Severus supposed, the work of the actual competent Runes professor, protecting them.

The remnants of the circles disappeared. The voices of the stones did not. Severus saw Minerva swing her wand in a commanding gesture, but the stones kept yelling, and Potter’s mouth twitched hard.

Is he as angry as I am that his incompetence was proven? No, he could not possibly be as angry as I am.

Severus was opening his mouth to speak when Potter uttered an unmistakable sound, at least to Severus, even through the pressure of his hands. This was Parseltongue, and it made the stones fall silent as though they’d been destroyed.

Severus dropped his hands at once. “I had heard that you had lost that ability when you came back to life!” he snapped.

“Rumors of my Parseltongue’s death were greatly exaggerated.”

That just made Severus glare harder. At least he had something that he could say, though, something that Potter couldn’t refute or turn aside. “Your runic circles failed. And you were the best the Ministry could send us?”

“They failed because there’s another component here,” Potter said, and turned to Minerva, in a completely natural motion that meant Severus wasn’t in his line of sight at all. Severus would have hopped with rage if he’d thought it would help. “A third thing the Ravenclaws’ circle did beyond making the stones disapprove of teenagers kissing and opening secret rooms in Hogwarts. What is it?”

Minerva thinned her lips. Severus was displeased to see that it was the expression she made when she was thinking, not the one that would have showed she disapproved of the abrupt way Potter was speaking to her. “I can think of nothing. They had no other effect that I know of.”

“It might not have shown up at the same time,” Potter said, pacing a step forwards, his eyes dark and intent. “It might have seemed as though they weren’t linked at all. But there is something, something that I needed to put in the circle and which wasn’t there. What is it?”

“That bloody kingfisher!”

Severus at least had the satisfaction of seeing Potter blink and turn to look at him. “What kingfisher?”

“A student did manage to Transfigure himself into a kingfisher a week ago, and we haven’t managed to turn him back or catch him,” Minerva admitted. “But that seemed to be a simple classroom accident gone wrong. They were practicing to turn boxes into kingfishers. How could it connect to the runic circle?”

Potter smiled in a thin, superior way that Severus was equally offended by and startled to see looked a lot like his own. “The circle that the students wanted to cast was based on desire,” he said. “Both in the obvious sense and in the sense of intentions that I talked about before. I would wager that, if you spoke to this kingfisher student’s yearmates or friends, they would tell you that he wanted badly to find his Animagus form. And he might be an actual kingfisher Animagus, or the runic circle’s free-floating intention magic might simply have interacted with his intense desire to transform and ensured that he adopted the form that people were trying to Transfigure objects into. Either way, I need him back here. The runic circle I’ll draw has to be different if I’m trying to reverse two effects and not one.”

Severus scowled. That had made sense. He didn’t like it.

Potter startled him by winking, even as Minerva said, “We have tried, Auror Potter—”

“I must insist on you calling me Harry if you’re going to give me leave to use your first name, Minerva.”

Minerva simpered in a manner frankly unbecoming of her age and position. Severus was the one who said, as the adult in the situation, “We’ve tried to catch the damn kingfisher. It’s protected against everything from the Summoning Charm to reversed Transfiguration. Magic seems to slip off it.”

“Him, Severus.”

“It’s a component of the runic circle, Potter says. It’s an it.”

Potter interrupted with what sounded like a tired sigh in the back of her voice. “Then the first challenge is to find the bird and draw a circle to attract his attention. He was enabled to transform in the first place by wild runic magic. He’ll be drawn to it, I think.”

Minerva nodded. Severus once again couldn’t find fault with the plan or the explanation, which made him wonder if he was going soft in his old age.

Then he saw the way that Potter glanced at him as if for approval, and the slightly wary way his head was tilted, and smirked. No. Definitely not.

*

“Here, birdie birdie birdie.”

The words made Severus wrinkle his nose, but oddly enough, it did seem to be working. Not two minutes after Potter had finished drawing a quick runic circle on the floor of the entrance hall and had begun his inane call, there was a flash of bright blue feathers from overhead, and the kingfisher came diving towards them.

Minerva gripped Severus’s arm, as if she assumed that he would draw his wand and blast the bird to pieces. Severus ignored her. Instead, he watched the soft, coaxing expression on Potter’s face.

Although it probably wasn’t needed. Potter’s theory appeared to have been correct. The kingfisher was indeed drawn towards the circle. It ignored Potter entirely, not to mention Severus and Minerva crouched behind the Grand Staircase, as it landed on the floor and walked straight into the circle.

A heat shimmer of verdant magic soared up from the circle and wrapped around the kingfisher. One moment it was a bird; the next it was a little jade statuette. Potter stepped forwards, smudged the chalk of the circle with a boot, and then walked into the circle and picked up the figurine to drop into a pocket.

“It won’t hurt him,” he said calmly, in response to Minerva’s horrified gaze. “He won’t remember it. And it’s a better solution than trying to carry a struggling, squirming live creature back to the corridors with the right stones.”

Severus really did not know what he was going to do with all these obnoxious feelings of approval lately.

*

“And you have all that you need for this second attempt, Mr. Potter? You are sure it will work?”

Minerva had been speaking in a clipped voice since Potter had transformed their escaped kingfisher into a statue. Now the statue sat in the exact center of the triple runic circle that Potter had finally finished drawing in the middle of the dungeon corridor. Severus couldn’t fault his dedication, at least. He had completed this third exercise of powerful magic in an hour without slowing or stopping or complaining.

And he had annoyed Minerva, which Severus always found entertaining.

“Yes, it should.” Potter looked up, the line of his throat something Severus had to drag his eyes away from. No one else was going to know about that, either. “I missed that there had been another interaction between the runes and desire, another kindling of free-floating intention. And I’m sure the first circle failed because we’re talking about three effects, only two of which we want to reverse. Not more. Unless either of you would like to tell me about anything else?”

Potter had an intense gaze when he wanted to. Severus crossed it with his own, as with a sword, and Potter smiled a little instead of looking away or down. That was a reaction Severus had only ever encountered with Albus. And Potter managed to do it without Albus’s irritating twinkling.

“No. Nothing else.” Minerva hesitated, and then sighed. “I know the boy’s caused trouble, but he is still a student.”

“I understand. So are the ones the stones trapped. Don’t worry. I’m going to free all of them.”

Severus frowned. Perhaps the most uncomfortable revelation of all was how much he believed Potter, how genuinely reassuring his voice was.

This time, Potter didn’t bother speaking the names of the runes. He went straight to Parseltongue, the hisses leaping and crackling among the stones. Their low, moaning voices came back, and joined with the language of serpents in such a way that they might even transform, for Severus, his primary association with Parseltongue, which was as the tongue that the Dark Lord had spoken to his disgusting familiar.

The familiar who had almost killed him.

Severus pushed the thought away so violently it made his head spin, and watched as the magic soared up out of the middle of the circle, this time as vibrantly blue as a real kingfisher’s feathers. It hit the statuette, and ran around it in circles.

To Severus’s surprise, the figurine didn’t immediately transform, either into a bird or a boy. Instead, the stones reacted first, wrenching slowly open, drawing back like impossibly heavy curtains on either side of a stage. And bundled bodies rolled out of them and into the middle of the corridor, bumping to a harsh stop.

Minerva immediately stepped forwards with her drawn wand, and cast diagnostic spells that all professors picked up sooner or later. A second later, she glanced at Severus and nodded. Severus nodded back. He could see for himself that the students were breathing, and none had any life-threatening injuries.

If they had been able to get the students back themselves, and make the walls shut up about their grievances, Severus would have considered asking Potter to leave the stones the way they were. Maybe it would lead to fewer students breaking curfew.

He glanced back when there was a sharp snapping sound, and saw the statuette breaking down. The flecks of jade fell off it, veins of marble seemed to cascade through it, and it abruptly surged in size. And then there was a Ravenclaw student crouched dazedly in the middle of the circle, looking around and panting for breath.

Minerva immediately cast the same diagnostics on him. Then she went over and knelt down beside him, speaking softly, presumably to reassure herself that he still retained his human mind.

I don’t know how she’ll be able to tell, Severus thought, and saw, as he glanced back, that the stones had sealed themselves.

“Mr. Potter!”

Potter was down on one knee when Severus turned around. He snarled as he hurried over. “Of course you would exhaust yourself now and die on my watch,” he snapped, grabbing Potter’s shoulders.

Potter laughed, a weak, wavering, faint sound that terrified Severus far more than he would ever admit. “Don’t be silly, sir. I’m just tired. I need to rest a little, and then I can return to the Ministry.”

“You’re going to the infirmary, Auror Potter,” Severus said, pleased with the startled look on Potter’s face as he waved his wand and conjured a stretcher.

“I don’t need—”

Even more pleasing was the utter shock that surprise melted into when Severus Stunned Potter so that he could get him on the stretcher. He ignored Minerva’s stern clucking at him, especially since she was soon distracted by the rescued students anyway. This was obviously for the greater good.

*

“Madam Pomfrey tells me you’re the one I have to thank for my Stunner headache.”

Severus looked up from the pile of paperwork he’d brought to the hospital wing and blinked innocently. Potter scowled at him from his bed. Poppy was taking no chances, and had taken Potter’s wand away and used a few of the milder charms that would stick him to the bed. Potter could have freed himself easily, doubtless, in ordinary circumstances, but those ordinary circumstances didn’t include exhausting his magic half to death.

“Yes,” Severus said.

Potter looked at him a little longer. He seemed to be waiting for shame or remorse. Severus didn’t know why he expected those, and finally Potter leaned back against his pillows and shook his head.

And did the last thing Severus had expected, himself. He laughed.

Severus gave him a steady stare, certain there was mockery here somewhere. This was James Potter’s son. But Potter gave him another one of those looks that said he was also Lily’s, and murmured, “Thanks. There aren’t many people who can stand up to me, anymore, and not many who would dare try. They all expect me to know best and save the day every time. And I was completely delirious with exhaustion. I really did think I could rest a little and stand up and just go back to the office to start writing the report. I know now that was delusional.”

Severus slowly laid aside the paperwork. He stared at Potter, and Potter stared back, his smile gradually diminishing.

“What?” Potter asked. “I won’t tell anyone that you had a moment of compassion, if you don’t want. I’m sure Minerva won’t think of it that way.”

“You’ve changed,” Severus said, and clenched his jaw at the sound of what he knew was almost jealousy in his voice. He sounded pathetic.

“So have you.”

“I have not. If you were privy to the contents of my thoughts—”

“But you managed to work with me, and didn’t go storming off when I returned some of the insults.” Potter shrugged, and then grimaced as one of the charms that Poppy had laid on him pulled the motion up short. “Once, you never would have managed that without flying into a rage. It might not be as obvious to you, because you don’t interact with a lot of your former students, and I imagine that Albus and Minerva haven’t changed that much about how they relate to you. But yes, you’ve changed.” Potter smiled then, teasingly enough to stall Severus’s brain. “I’m afraid that you have to live with the indignity of being a better man than you used to be.”

“You know the sacrifices I made,” Severus said, and his voice shook a little. He stopped speaking at once.

Potter leaned forwards, giving him that intense gaze. Severus didn’t falter, but it was a near thing.

“I know. And I know that you’ve finally been allowed the time and effort to grow beyond them, not to always live in their shadow.”

Severus blinked hard. Then he said, “I suppose you would understand that better than most. You’ve done your own growing up.”

Potter abruptly winked at him, and said in a low, sultry tone, “I was wondering if you would notice.”

Severus choked on air. When he could speak—which took a shorter time than it might have, because Potter was watching him with a mischievous expression that said he might feel revenged for the Stunner—Severus snapped, “Mr. Potter, that is highly inappropriate.”

“Why? We’re not teacher and student anymore. We’re not even professional colleagues. It’s not like I would be coming back to Hogwarts to work under you on a regular basis.” Potter tilted his head the other way, and he no longer looked like James or Lily at all, just himself. “I mean, not that I’m opposed to a certain degree of under…”

Severus resisted the choke this time. “I am—much older than you! Your mother is a loss I still mourn. Your father was my tormenter!”

“And you were mine,” Potter countered, not sounding shaken. “I meant what I said about it being so rare that someone challenges me. If you could do that, and I know you’d be good at it, then you’re already the most attractive person I’ve met in years.”

“I thought,” Severus said, and stopped because he refused to stutter. He went on when he had had enough of Potter watching him patiently. “I thought you had—something with Miss Weasley.”

Potter grinned. “For a little while. But we both discovered that we were gay and announced it to each other the same day, can you believe that? Ginny’s much happier with her girlfriend on the Harpies team, and I’ll be much happier once I find a man who can challenge me. In every possible way.”

Severus tightened his hands. This declaration was something that he had never anticipated, maddening for a man who had survived for so many years by understanding where his enemies were coming from before they struck, and did not know how to face.

But Potter was staring at him, and was Severus really going to let a Potter get the best of him?

He nodded. “We can try. We will speak when you are no longer bound to this bed.” He stood in a flourish of robes.

“Oh, you prefer to do your own binding?”

Severus did not like the way his face turned red, but he did like the dark tinge to Potter’s eyes, and the way that he reached for Severus for a moment before the charms yanked his hand back.

That was a good look on him, in fact. The way that he had tried and then failed to touch Severus, and the way that his chest was beginning to move faster as he breathed.

“I might,” Severus said, startled by the change in his own voice, and the stirring in his chest. “But you’ll need to prove yourself worthy of it. If I’m the one challenging you, I’d like to see a little challenge in return, not just someone who rolls over the moment I glare at him.”

Potter grinned, all teeth. “I think I can arrange that.”

“See that you do, Auror Potter,” Severus said. “And perhaps someday, I shall grant you permission to call me by my first name.”

He turned and walked out of the hospital wing, his breath already coming faster than he wanted it to. Some of it was the old fear, that he had made a move that would only result in pain, and he should back off, hide, turn away, defend himself with caustic words to keep the other person from hurting him or taking advantage of his weakness.

But a surprisingly large component of his emotion was desire. And a bit of it was soaring exhilaration, at the idea of a challenge that he might meet.

A challenge that might change him further.

Perhaps we shall both learn what we are made of.

The End.