Chapter Text
Bill was having an awful start to school, if he was being honest. He was barely finished with his first week, but he was emotionally exhausted.
His first class — that is, his first class at Hogwarts ever — had been an absolute dumpster fire! He hadn’t been able to stop crying afterwards because he’d been so embarrassed, and now all of the Slytherins wouldn’t stop laughing at him in the halls, calling him all sorts of names when the professors weren’t looking. His friend Xander had done his best to comfort him afterwards, patting him on the shoulder awkwardly and offering him sweets from his private stash, but Bill was so humiliated to be caught in such a state that he hadn’t been able to do anything except stuff chocolates into his mouth and cry more.
He really hated Professor Snape. Of course Bill wouldn’t know what those ingredients were, he was a first year student! Classes had only started five minutes ago! Why was he so unreasonable?? Xander said that he had ‘a stick up you-know-where,’ which had made him laugh at least, albeit weakly.
This was just… not the way he thought the school year would start. He shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up so much… He’d been so excited, hadn’t he? And he couldn’t tell his parents, either — he felt so weak for not being able to stand up for himself. What would they say when they heard? It hadn’t even been a week.
Maybe the Sorting Hat got it wrong. Bill surely wasn’t meant to be in Gryffindor.
It had been a few days since, and it only seemed to go downhill from there. It was Thursday now and he still had one class, but rather than walking towards the fields for his flying lesson, Bill was hiding in a bathroom stall, hugging his knees on top of a toilet seat. He’d nearly been cornered earlier by this big, tall brute named Phineas Taylor — he was a familiar face nowadays, and he and his friends were always haunting Bill’s steps. He didn’t know what Taylor’s deal was, or why he kept messing with him, but there was something dreadful about his face. It made Bill’s gut churn with anxiety.
Bill had been walking out of the Great Hall after lunch when he’d caught sight of Taylor’s flat, brown hair rapidly coming to corner him, so he’d turned on his heel and ran into this bathroom as quickly as he could, hoping to escape Taylor’s fists as he slammed the creaky stall shut. The sound of jeering and laughter followed him — “look at the cowardly Gryffindor, running away!” — but he didn’t want to take his chances this time. He still had a bruise on his cheekbone from their last encounter this morning. Luckily, he’d managed to escape before worse could happen… However, it was only a matter of time before he ended up in the hospital wing, he thought.
It was only a matter of time.
Something about that thought made it impossible for him to move from his spot on top of the toilet seat, terrified that Taylor would follow him in here and bang the stall door down. He didn’t want today to be the day he went to the hospital wing. So, helpless to do anything but let his lungs freeze and muscles lock in place, he prayed he wouldn’t make a sound, knowing that he would be safest that way. Time ticked on with tense seconds as he clutched the silky black of his robes, pulling the fabric tight across him in an attempt to disappear inside them. He stared at the immobile stall door, waiting for the moment it moved.
He didn’t even dare breathe until he was absolutely certain that no more faint laughter could be heard. Soon after that, the sound of voices faded away altogether. Classes must be starting soon.
He was missing his first lesson with Mr Arthur, Bill realised. Maybe that’s why he started crying again. He just couldn’t stop crying these days — his eyes were always so red and swollen that it hurt to blink. But he was terrified to go to class, too, because he shared flying lessons with the Slytherins. He just couldn’t get away from the Slytherins!
The minutes went by and eventually, he couldn’t muster any more tears, not even if he tried. He was too tired, all of a sudden. Too tired to think, or even feel scared anymore. A dull, resigned dread gripped his heart instead.
He couldn’t skip flying lessons every week, or he’d definitely fail. That was no way to live, hiding away from every obstacle that came for him. Admittedly, this obstacle was a little more… difficult than the others he'd encountered in his life, but— he just… needed to get past this first lesson. Taylor wouldn’t be able to hurt him with Mr Arthur watching, anyway, right?
Mr Arthur was so brave. Nobody could possibly call him a coward — he wouldn’t let those bullies hurt him. Bill wasn’t anything like Mr Arthur, but maybe he could try to be.
With that, Bill took a deep breath, untangling his body from the top of the toilet, and carelessly opened the stall door, too confident that the danger had passed.
His scream was piercing when he saw Amira Jadmani staring straight at him with her pitless eyes, the sound echoing through the otherwise empty bathroom. He stumbled away and held up his hands in an instinct to protect himself.
“Weasley, this is a girls’ bathroom,” she said simply, completely unamused.
Bill blinked, his heart beating heavily. He tried to control his breathing. “Is it?” he said faintly.
Oh. So that was why Taylor hadn’t followed him in here. The thought fled across his mind with a sort of detached realisation.
Jadmani frowned slightly. She didn’t break eye contact with him for a second, and Bill had to look away to escape her gaze. He knew he looked a mess — whenever he cried, his eyes went all bloodshot and his nose went red like he had allergies. He must look like a big tomato — eyes, hair, tie, nose, cheeks, everything red.
“Yes. Didn’t you see the sign?” she asked flatly.
Bill swallowed what felt like a stone in his throat as he tried not to cry again. It felt like his nerves were frayed! He didn’t know what to say. Was it possible to feel terribly ashamed and confused at the same time?
Jadmani seemed to scan him with her eyes for a moment. “Why aren’t you with the others? Class is starting,” she said.
“I, er…” Bill chewed his lip nervously, his hands shaking as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I lost track of time.”
Jadmani didn’t miss a beat as she changed her line of questioning. She didn’t even blink. (Had he ever seen her blink before, actually? He must have, at some point.) “What happened to your face?”
“I fell… into, erm, into a wall.” Bill winced. That sounded really weak.
Jadmani pursed her lips. “I don’t believe you.”
“Okay,” he mumbled defeatedly. “I might have been shoved into a wall from getting knocked in the face. There. Gonna laugh now? Say that it’s all my fault because of ‘natural selection’?”
She rolled her eyes. It was the most he’d ever seen her eyes move. “When you say something funny, I’ll laugh. Come on, you’re late and I have somewhere to be.” She turned around and began to walk away. Bill watched her, utterly confused.
She paused in front of the bathroom exit, looking like a statue. Everything about her was so still, it was really unnerving. “I’m losing my patience,” she said.
“What?”
“Weasley, you have three seconds to get over here.” She pointed at the spot on the ground next to her.
Bill gaped in confusion. “Oh,” he said, then winced at how stupid he sounded. He scrambled out of his stall and ran to join her.
Walking through the halls with her was a very strange experience. He was sort of glad that classes had started already, otherwise people would be able to witness him, with red-rimmed eyes and the occasional sniffle, shuffling his feet alongside the even, sharp clicks of Amira Jadmani’s shoes. Her pace was so perfect that it sounded like a metronome.
Wait a minute, where were they even going? There was no way she was walking to class with him… right?
This has to be the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me, Bill thought, chancing a glance at her every five seconds. Her gaze was steadily forward like she didn’t even notice Bill was walking next to her. Really, really weird, he decided.
“How did you know I was there?” Bill asked hesitantly.
Jadmani answered him immediately, which was also weird. “I heard Taylor joking about a boy running into the girls’ bathroom, and that they must secretly be a girl in disguise. Figured it was you.”
“Ah…” Bill grimaced. She must’ve been listening to him cry the whole time, too. That was so embarrassing… There were a few seconds where he struggled to figure out what to say. “I’m— erm, I’m not. Secretly a girl, that is. Just so you know.” Jadmani didn’t respond, and he began to sweat a little. “Not that being a girl is bad or anything, I just— personally, I like being a boy, and I really don’t have any desire to be a girl, even though I guess I was in the girls’ bathroom, which— actually, I’m going to shut up now,” he concluded shamefully.
All his unlikely hallway partner did in response to his blundering was huff softly through her nose. She stopped walking as she reached the entrance to the fields, and Bill could see Mr Arthur walking through the grass, surveying the Gryffindors and Slytherins as they tried to summon their brooms.
“You go now,” she ordered. “I won’t be seen with you.”
He wanted to ask why she wasn’t coming with him — they were in the same flying class, after all — but didn’t want to dare such a question. “Why are you talking to me, then?” Bill asked instead, slightly disoriented. He was being thrown in all sorts of directions lately — only a short while ago, he’d never felt so low, but now he was just exhausted and confused.
Jadmani opened her mouth to respond, but oddly enough, she seemed to backtrack on whatever she was planning to say. She stared at him silently, then glanced away. “I think I contributed to your… circumstances, somewhat,” she admitted. Her voice was a lot quieter than before, like these were words she hadn’t tested out loud before.
“Oh,” he said dumbly, trying to figure out if this was some sort of indirect apology. “Okay. Well. Thanks, I think? And, er, thanks for walking with me, I s’pose. You really didn’t have to—”
Jadmani’s expression soured, and she gave him a scary glare. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”
“Right! Got it, noted— I’m going to go!” he said hurriedly, then ran to go find Xander.
Arthur checked his list of students again. No, he’d read it right the first three times — but, then, where the hell were his last two students?
He didn’t know why he didn’t expect something to go wrong with this lot. Gryffindors and Slytherins were giving Merlin a heap of trouble in his own class already — something about mean-spirited flirting and harassment? — but, honestly, Arthur didn’t understand why the two Houses were at such odds with each other! Sure, Godric and Salazar had something like a rivalry when they were alive, but that had been mostly academic, outside the other disagreements they’d had on muggleborns. (That had been a headache.)
Hell, even he and Merlin got along just fine, didn’t they? For quite a long time, too! So, what on earth had happened to inter-House camaraderie since the last time they’d been at Hogwarts? He didn’t know. He suspected it was due to the war, but some of the resentment seemed outside the realm of that.
That being said, Arthur was currently missing one student from both of those Houses — Bill Weasley and Amira Jadmani. He’d started the lesson without them, but he couldn’t deny that he was a little concerned. He hadn’t met Jadmani before, but he remembered how excited Bill had been to start school, so missing his first flying lesson seemed out of character for him. Perhaps Arthur hadn’t known Bill long enough to discern that, but something felt off, and he had learnt to trust his gut over the years. That was the whole reason they were even at Hogwarts in the first place — something was incredibly fishy about the death of Tom Riddle, and Snape and Dumbledore were up to their eyeballs in secrets.
Fortunately, Arthur didn’t live in suspense much longer. While he was helping one of his students correct their posture, he saw Bill strolling up to class, anxiously fiddling with the edges of his robes.
“Bill! There you are, where’ve you been?” a Gryffindor boy exclaimed — Alexander Maguire, Arthur recalled, trying to practise names.
“A very good question. I expect Mr Weasley has a reasonable explanation?” He crossed his arms, raising his eyebrows expectantly at the boy.
Now that Bill was closer, Arthur peered at his face for a moment as he noticed some sort of mark on his cheekbone. Was that a bruise? It must have been fresh — it hadn’t turned green or yellow yet, still a bright, throbbing reddish purple and spreading to his eye. Bill seemed to have been crying, too, which made him suspect that the bruise wasn’t an accident.
“I’m so sorry, Mr Arthur— I mean, Professor Pendragon—” Bill stammered. “I was… in the bathroom.”
Arthur hummed, somewhat disbelievingly. In the bathroom, for nearly twenty minutes? The kid either had serious bowel issues, or he wasn’t telling the truth. “I see. Well, five points from Gryffindor for your tardiness. Try to go to the bathroom during your lunch break in the future, alright? I know you just came from one.”
“Yes, sir,” Bill said, looking at his feet in shame. He seemed a lot more subdued than the last time he’d seen him, which wasn’t comforting in the slightest.
“Good.” Arthur nodded sharply, and left it at that for now. “Well, we need to catch you up to the others. Let’s go to this broom over here, and you can show me what you’ve got. I believe you said your dad taught you already?”
Bill perked up a bit at that, seeming to relax a little as he hopped over to the broom. “Yeah! I got a lot of practice this past summer, and I’ve been helping to teach my siblings, too!”
The lesson, thankfully, went on as normal after that. The class practised summoning and hovering for most of the time, which inevitably involved a lot of wobbling and bruised knees. Bill was actually fairly good at a broom, just like he’d said, so Arthur enlisted him and some of the other students to help their peers. A lot more Gryffindors were struggling than any of the other Houses Arthur had taught — they were probably learning for the first time — so he was glad to have some students willing to help things along. Hopefully, they'd be off the ground before the weather turned.
“You remember Bill?” Arthur mentally asked Merlin as he surveyed his class. They had only about ten minutes left at that point, and he was trying to figure out how to broach the subject of the bruise with his student.
“I’m assuming this is important. I was in the middle of demonstrating something,” Merlin retorted.
“I thought you didn’t have class at this time on Thursdays?” Arthur wondered, then put the thought aside. “Never mind. I think Bill might be getting knocked around by someone. Turned up late with a bruise.”
“Oh, gods,” his husband sighed. There was a moment of silence, probably because Merlin was talking to someone on his side of things. “He doesn’t deserve any of that…” he continued. “Well, talk to him after class, and let me know how it goes. I hope it’s just a misunderstanding.”
“Sure. Have fun with your ‘demonstrating’.”
“Shut up, I was being serious! I had a student here.”
The glaring sun was beating down on all of them with quite some intensity, and his students looked seriously miserable in their black robes. Even Arthur was beginning to sweat, so he took pity on them and began to wrap things up a little early. As everyone gathered their things and the brooms returned to their places on the ground, he was about to ask Bill to step aside with him when a girl’s voice piped up from his left.
“Excuse me,” the girl said bluntly.
He blinked, looking down and noting a young girl with a Slytherin tie, and concluded that it must be the student he was missing.
“Jadmani?” Arthur asked, just to clarify. She nodded. “You better have a good explanation for where you’ve been. Class is over.”
She better not say the bathroom, he thought with exasperation.
She stood just above half of his height, but the steadiness in her eyes made it clear that she wasn’t the least bit intimidated, regardless of his scolding tone.
Jadmani stared up at him, unblinking. Okay, that was a little creepy. “I have permission from the headmaster to drop this class,” she said. She handed him a slip of parchment paper that she’d been carrying. Sure enough, he unfolded it, and it had Dumbledore’s dramatic signature, as well as Merlin’s, for whatever reason? “My parents made sure I was taught to fly years ago, and they wanted me to use this time to get ahead of my peers instead of wasting it on something I already know.”
Arthur hummed, mildly surprised. “Well, I’ll have to confirm this. Do you have an alternative class arranged yet? If not, I suspect the headmaster would prefer you spend your class time in the library so you don’t disturb other students.”
Jadmani paused, then said reluctantly, “I’m having weekly lessons with Professor Emrys now. That’s where I was.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Merlin, you’re stealing my students now?” Arthur grouched. Merlin responded with a laugh, just to irritate him.
Graciously, Arthur did not say anything like that to Jadmani’s face. Instead, he said, “Well, you’ll be in good hands. Good luck with your studies.”
Jadmani nodded sharply, then strode away.
Arthur shook his head. “So, you’re saddled with a child whose parents have huge expectations of them. Have fun with that.”
“Hmm, sounds familiar…” Merlin drawled teasingly. “Do you happen to remember someone whose father had huge expectations of him?”
“Don’t you start.”
“I was going to say that I have experience in soothing prickly edges, but I see that’s not true in your case.”
Arthur nearly rolled his eyes. “Why did you agree to private lessons, anyway?” he asked.
“Dumbledore approached me with a salary increase and I thought, ‘Why not?’. Variety is the spice of life, of whatever the saying is. Besides, I can babysit a rich kid for an hour or two.” Merlin said dryly. “Maybe she’ll even learn something.”
Merlin wished their office had spinny chairs. The chairs without wheels were just so boring and stiff — and he wasn’t either of those things. Of course, Arthur was boring and stiff because he liked the chairs without wheels, but Merlin thought the swivel chair was a fantastic invention! He could rocket to the other side of the room without even having to get up from his seat, which would mean he could bother his husband quicker, since Arthur’s desk also happened to be on the other side of the room.
Overall, their office was quite cramped, considering he was sharing one with his husband. Something about a lot of the rooms in Hogwarts being ‘haunted’ and ‘uncooperative,’ which was hilarious because Merlin personally knew every single ghost that floated through the castle by now, and they weren’t all that bad. Except maybe Binns — he was dreadfully boring and stiff, just like these chairs. He’d be all over these chairs.
Merlin suspected that Dumbledore got some sort of kick out of smushing him and Arthur together at every given moment, now that he knew about their relationship. Interesting, indeed. He’d have to delve more into Dumbledore’s lack of love life at this rate! Living vicariously through them, was he?
Anyway, why didn’t people in the magical world like spinny chairs? He couldn’t find any on sale anywhere! He was honestly starting to believe that modern sorcerers were just allergic to fun and happiness, which was sad and depressing to think about.
After Jadmani had departed (in a very formal manner, at that, with lots of smoothing out her clothes and hair), Merlin was left to contemplate how to transfigure the legs of his chair into wheels without accidentally creating a wheelchair. He was in the middle of this spontaneous project when someone burst into the office with a lot of noise and fanfare.
Since Merlin was on the floor behind his desk as he adjusted the size of the wheels, he didn’t bother to check who this person was. Unfortunately, due to this, he just assumed that it was his husband because Arthur tended to make a lot of noise as a general rule, so he began babbling as he normally would:
“Arthur, your footsteps get more thunderous every time you come in here, you should really try to watch your eating habits,” he quipped, holding his hand over the wheel on the back left of the chair and trying to change it back from a bicycle wheel to something more manageable. “I know that the meals at Hogwarts are delicious, but—”
“Who are you?” a young woman said coolly. That was definitely not Arthur — he was neither young nor a woman!
Merlin yelped in surprise at this unexpected voice and banged his head on a drawer, then peeked over the top of the table. The girl had curly red hair and was peering at him with a confused gape in her mouth.
He blinked. Was she a student or a professor? She had to be around Snape’s age, surely, but that wasn’t much of an indicator.
“Who are—?” Merlin began to repeat with a tilt of his head, but cut himself off and quickly scrambled off the floor, brushing the dust off his pants. “Right, sorry! I’m Professor Emrys, I’m new!” He held out of his hand for her to shake. “Who might you be?”
“Um.” She looked around, puzzled, as if hoping that whatever she was looking for would pop out of thin air. “Professor Byrnes, Divination. Sorry, why are you in here, exactly?”
“Er,” he said, his hand awkwardly hanging in the air. He followed her gaze, trying to figure out what she meant. They both looked around the walls for a moment — he noted his artwork on the wall, the splatter of green from their plants, and Arthur’s black and white photographs in their frames — but he still didn’t understand. “This is my office?” he chanced.
“No, it’s not,” she said, quite impatient. Oh, alright then, Merlin thought wryly, if she says so, then it must be true. “This is Professor Pendragon’s office,” Byrnes continued emphatically, glaring at him like he’d offended her very being. “I should report you to the headmaster for breaking in and stealing things, you know.”
“I don’t know what you mean, I have never stolen anything in my life,” Merlin said innocently, putting his hands behind his back as it became clear that she had no intention of reciprocating the handshake. “Besides, this is my office — Arthur and I share it. Were you looking for him, perhaps? He won’t be back for another half hour at best. His class only just ended.”
Byrnes pouted for a moment, then made a face. “Why doesn’t Arthur have his own office? He surely deserves to have his own space.”
“I haven’t heard any complaints from him,” he replied delicately.
“Do you always talk about him like that?” Byrnes countered. “It wasn’t very flattering. I can’t imagine Arthur appreciates being belittled by his coworker. You know, Arthur is very fit, so I don’t know why you were saying any of those things in the first place!”
Merlin grinned and leaned against his desk, starting to enjoy riling her up. Perhaps he shouldn’t like toying with people so much, but he couldn’t help it when they made it so entertaining. “You think so? You think that if Arthur was actually the one to walk in just now, he would’ve been upset?”
Byrnes crossed her arms confrontationally. “Of course he would!”
“If you say so. Anyway, don’t worry, it’s all in good fun,” Merlin dismissed flippantly. “Did you need something? I could pass along a message, if you like.”
Byrnes didn’t seem very confident in this. “I can wait for him,” she said, squinting at him like he was oddly suspicious.
Merlin raised an eyebrow at her, then shrugged and sat back on the ground to fiddle with his wheels. “Suit yourself.”
An awkward silence permeated the air for a few moments. Merlin spied on her from the cracks of his desk, watching as she shuffled unsurely from side to side before trotting over to Arthur’s desk, where she began to delicately run her hands over the wooden surface.
He’s touched this! Merlin mirthfully imagined her thinking. Wow! He sat in this chair! He breathed this air!
Sure enough, she only took a few more minutes of reverent gazing before she finally sat herself in Arthur’s chair, neatly folding her hands on the table with an excited smile.
Poor thing, he thought. The chair didn’t even have wheels.
“What did Pendragon want?” Xander asked his friend as they were exiting the field. He’d decided to wait for Bill this time, a little worried about his sudden disappearance earlier. They had gotten separated on the way to their flying lesson, but Xander had assumed that Bill would show up shortly after him. However, when he didn’t, he was understandably concerned.
Xander had a lot of friends, but none of them worried him as much as Bill did. Not that it was Bill’s fault — it was all Snape’s for setting the bloodhounds on his friend on the first day of school. Xander usually didn’t dislike people, sticking with just indifference most of the time, but Snape had immediately rubbed him the wrong way when he’d made Bill cry like that in front of everyone. What kind of professor enjoys making their students cry? Not a good one.
Bill sighed, shaking his head. They walked in silence for a moment, the shuffling of their footsteps joining the sea of other students as they weaved through the loud, crowded hallways.
“I don’t want to bother you,” his friend said eventually.
“No, you couldn’t, really,” he assured. “Anyway, I’d rather worry knowing what I’m worrying about, so put me out of my misery.”
“You know that Slytherin, Phineas Taylor?” Bill said defeatedly.
“Vaguely, yeah. A complete git, isn’t he?”
“Understatement of the century. He won’t leave me alone! During the flying lesson, I heard him telling everyone that I’m actually a girl and I got the wrong uniform.”
“Ugh, what a blockhead… And Pendragon didn’t do anything about it?”
“I don’t think he heard,” Bill said sheepishly. “He was kind of busy.”
Xander shook his head, disappointed but not necessarily surprised. “Where were you earlier, anyway? Taylor was at our flying lesson way before you were— Wait, no,” Xander paused, looking at his friend's face with a sudden understanding. “Does that mean he gave you that thing on your face? You told me you were just clumsy.”
Bill winced. “Sorry. Like I said, I didn’t want to bother you. I don’t want you to worry about me.”
“Well, now I’m worried!” Xander replied indignantly. “Is Pendragon going to do anything about it? You told him, didn’t you? He pulled you aside to ask you about it, right? Please tell me you told him, or I swear on Merlin’s trousers that I’m marching over there to tell him myself.”
Bill waved his hands frantically. “Yes! Yes, I did, please don’t do that! He said he’s going to go talk to Snape since he’s the Head of Slytherin.”
Xander threw his hands up in frustration. “That’s not going to do anything! This is practically Snape’s fault in the first place, isn’t it? He’s the one that set that tosser on your trail!”
“It’s alright,” Bill sighed. “I trust Pendragon, I’m sure he’ll figure something out. He didn’t seem really happy about it, anyway, so I doubt he will brush it under the rug, right?”
Xander wasn’t entirely satisfied with this. “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not letting you out of my sight from now on,” he vowed.
“He also said he was going to teach me how to defend myself, but I’m not really sure what that means,” Bill admitted. “We’re not allowed to use magic on other students. I’ll just get in trouble.”
“Maybe he’ll teach you how to throw a punch,” Xander mused, clenching his fists and poorly mimicking a fighting stance.
Bill shoved him jokingly. “Yeah, right. There’s no way I can do that. I have noodle arms.”
Severus had woken up with a headache, and by the end of the day, he was fully intending to lock himself inside his office and never come out again.
Over the course of the week, he learnt that he pretty much hated children. It was terrible that he was being put in charge of so many of them — at this point, he wanted to just let them fend for themselves so he could recuperate for a month. Dealing with them was exhausting! He had no idea why Narcissa wanted him to be Draco’s godfather, if this job was already becoming a nightmare for him. A stupid decision on her part, surely. Her sister Bellatrix was probably a better choice at this rate, even trapped up in Azkaban as she was.
Flopping himself in front of his desk, he rubbed his temples with clenched eyes, fumbling for a potion that would relieve the pressure in his skull. It was just around here somewhere, surely — his hand knocked something over in his drawer, and he felt liquid splash over his skin as glass shattered and cut his palm.
“Shit,” he hissed, flicking his hand to try and get the substance off. It didn’t burn, thankfully, but it could have any number of purposes, knowing the things he kept in that drawer.
He peeled his eyes open and saw a silvery sheen on his skin. “Shit,” he said again, inhaling the love potion sharply by accident and shaking with the barrage of softer emotions that leapt to the forefront of his mind, causing his headache to throb all the more incessantly.
He jumped out of his seat, clutching his wrist to his chest as he stumbled to grab any sort of cloth to clean the potion off his skin, hoping that it wouldn’t absorb. His palm began to painfully beat with his pulse as blood dripped down his arm to the floor.
Everything ached — his skull, his hand, his chest — with an intensity that made him stumble on weakened legs, as if he were drunk. It hurt so much that he didn’t even notice the potion changing colours until he finally got to the sink, intending to wash away the blood and the potion in one fell swoop.
Severus blinked, struggling to see through blurry vision. The potion was glowing pink. It was glowing. It was fucking pink. It was supposed to be pearlescent.
What the fuck? Amortentia didn’t do that. Amortentia wasn’t supposed to change colours. What the hell did he spill on himself?
Severus did a mental check of his body, frightened that his thoughts were going to suddenly cloud over with the potion’s effects, but nothing happened. Nothing changed at all. If the potion wasn’t glowing, he wouldn’t have even noticed that something had happened.
He couldn’t help but turn his hand over, scrutinising the change even as his blood dripped and mixed with the potion further. Could it have been his blood that had this effect on the potion? He was reluctantly fascinated. Was this some sort of modified version of Amortentia, then? The smell hadn’t changed — he was intensely reminded of it with every second that passed — but perhaps the consistency had changed as well. Before, it had been thick and sap-like, perhaps almost like a unicorn's blood, but now it was thin as oil, clinging to his skin like dew drops.
There was still some unmixed potion on the back of his hand, which he swiped up with a finger and pressed to a droplet of his blood sliding down the white porcelain sink. The change was instantaneous, a dull light beginning to glow from the droplet as it slid as quickly as tears down to the drain.
What could the blood possibly do to the potion? What effect did it have?
Severus flinched at the sound of someone knocking on his office door. He quickly rinsed his hand, removing any evidence of the new concoction as quickly as it had been made.
“Snape? Are you in there? I need to discuss something with you,” came Pendragon’s voice. Severus’s lip curled with annoyance. He was on the verge of discovering something, and of course, Pendragon had to come and interrupt it!
The knock came again.
“Have some patience, for Merlin’s sake!” Severus spat loudly, his headache beginning to return with full force. Damn it all!
He quickly wrapped his hand with a towel to stem the bleeding, then stalked over to open the door.
Pendragon looked him up and down, clearly unimpressed. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to his hand.
“That’s none of your business,” Severus said defensively. “Now, what the hell do you want? I’m busy.”
Pendragon clenched his jaw. “We need to talk about one of your Slytherins, Phineas Taylor.”
“Yes, yes, what about him?” Severus asked impatiently. He had no idea who Taylor was, honestly, and he didn't really care, either.
“I understand that you’re in charge of dealing out punishments for your House, and I figured I should do my duty as a fellow professor and inform you that Taylor has been bullying another student, physically and verbally.” Pendragon crossed his arms, speaking firmly. “I have taken points off already, but I need to know that you’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. I will also inform Professor McGonagall, since the victim is one of her students.”
“Fine, I’ll deal with it. Now leave me alone,” Severus replied, already in the process of closing the door. Pendragon stuck his foot in the doorway before Severus could be free of him, much to his frustration. The door protested the intrusion with a sharp creak.
“I don’t think you’re taking this as seriously as you should be,” Pendragon said through the crack. Severus hated those blue eyes, always judging him. What did he know? What right did he have to stick his nose into Severus’s business?! “Students deserve a safe environment,” Pendragon continued angrily. “At the very least, you could act like you care about the situation.”
“I told you already, I’ll handle it!” Severus yelled, the pain of his palm forcefully reminding him of the more pressing issues at hand. “Now get the hell out of my office!”
Pendragon gritted his teeth, then receded, finally allowing Severus his peace, who slammed the door shut triumphantly. Good riddance, Severus thought.
He went back to his drawer and began to try to salvage the last remains of the potion he had left, already drawing up multiple experiments in his head. A potion that required blood was powerful — and dangerous. He needed to get to the bottom of this as swiftly as possible.