Chapter Text
As he let the door close behind him, Severus set the bundle of his portable tool roll, cauldron, supplies, and heating slate on the small side table he’d placed by the door to receive them on his return from his scheduled instruction sessions with the House of Lords.
Despite the sessions having become one of the more fervently-anticipated periods of his week, this particular evening’s session -focused on the correct and delicate preparation of the herbs for the potions they would begin the next morning- had been tiring and had taxed Severus’s already on-edge nerves, marred as they were by the unexpected pronouncement which had interrupted the school's evening meal and overshadowed everything that had followed after.
He should have recognized from the very beginning of the session, when Lady Frobisher had sliced the soft tissue between the second and third thumb joints of her left hand, simply trying to remove the flint edged blade of her floral knife from its case, that the session was nearly a lost cause. Having no desire to feed the incipient display, prompted as it was by the tottering old lush's earlier pronouncement, by giving any indication of how much the hack’s prediction had rattled him, Severus had attempted to push through the lesson, ignoring Lady Armistad-Granger's pale expression and tendency to glance away from him quickly when he passed her station. His godson was hardly better with red-rimmed eyes and a quivering lip whenever he looked Severus's direction. Even the normally more stoic Peverell-Potter and Fischer-Watson-Potter heirs seemed more prone to studying him and exchanging pensive glances when they thought he wasn't observing them.
While their blatant concern was kinder than he had come to expect from students, and he begrudgingly appreciated it for that fact, it was nevertheless exhausting, and the normally ninety minute session had stretched into a barely productive three hundred sixty minute session before the heirs finally had sufficient quantities to brew the morning session's assigned potions.
Despite being the cause of their distraction, Severus hadn't had the energy to argue the point when Lord Peverell-Potter handed him a second Gringotts’ voucher adjusting the session fee to reflect the additional time spent. Ironically, where he would have been pleased to receive even a tenth of the amount from the Headmaster in remuneration for his normal duties (assigned - without salary - through the 'unoffical parole’ that the Headmaster had 'negotiated’ for him sans trial, “after all” the Headmaster, and Chief Mugwump, had convincingly argued, Severus would lose at trial “for certainly no one would credit even the veritaserum-enhanced testimony of a potion master”) … receiving a much higher standard from the heirs for tuition that was outside of the scope of his normal duties made him uncomfortable. Arguing the point had gotten him nowhere when the young retention manager was always quick to point out that he was offering Severus neither more nor less than any of the other Professors- even though some of them didn't even have a first mastery in the subject they taught and Severus had two and should unquestionably be receiving more for that fact alone. The boy had been in the goblins care long enough to have learned to anticipate arguments and usually have a ready answer waiting… and Severus, not having the energy to out-argue Lord Peverell-Potter, after the long and draining evening, had simply conceded, accepting the voucher before gratefully retreating to the solitude of his quarters.
Trying to ignore the slight vibration transmitted through the stiff fabric from his shaking fingers as he began to unbutton his collar, Severus paused to slow and steady the movements his thumb and forefinger turning the simple act into a meditation - as he had not done (or needed to do) in just over a decade. He stroked his thumb pad in a small circle over the small cloth top of the button, once, twice, a third and a fourth time, before pushing the button through on the fifth stroke. Five buttons from the top of his collar to the base of his throat were opened in this manner before his fingers moved to the double-breasted panel running from his collarbone to waist, where he reversed the direction of the small circling movement as he moved through the five buttons on each side.
Having gained slightly more composure than when he had started on the buttons at his throat, he slowed his breathing to making an exhale with each button being pushed through its loop. By the time he reached the placket of his slacks and opened it to pull the edges of his shirt free from his waistline, the rigid posture that he had both forced on himself and endured since hearing Trelawny first utterance of the Prince surname had finally relaxed even if it left him somewhat aching from the absence of the surrendered tensions.
His fleeting progress towards calm vanished with the almost unnoticeable brush of a small animal against his personal wards and the fleeting image of a grey tabby flashing across his occluded mind - identifying the not-unwelcome if momentarily undesired guest. He was half inclined to simply ignore the witch when another brush across his wards was accompanied by a rather forcefully-pushed image of a full bottle of Glenfiddich.
Snorting at the totally unsubtle bribe, Severus sighed, momentarily dropping his wards as he moved to tuck his shirt tales back in.
“Now don't you bother on my account,” Minerva McGonagall chuckled, “I've always thought you could use a tad less starch.”
Debating briefly whether to call her on the hypocrisy of decrying his stiff manner compared to her own, Severus instead ceased his efforts to redress and peaking a brow - inquired, “I believe there was an offer made of Glenfiddich?”
“Yes, yes,” Minerva laughed before reaching up to detach what looked to be three charms from a barely-noticeable thin silver necklace. “One musn't forget to pay one's entrance fees.”
Laughing at his gaping expression and quick glances back and forth between the numerous other charms on her necklace and the now resized bottle, she teased, “Now, Severus, you couldn't think that I, a good and proper Scotswoman, would ever hold with wasting liquor down a drain?”
”I apologize for my failure to recognize the impracticality of doing so.” He retorted, feeling lighter for the banter.
“And so you should. Every year these poor bairn spend good money on spirits they haven't the common sense to enjoy off school grounds. Pouring their labors out only adds insult to the injury of having it confiscated.”
“And, yet, I canna’ remember a time’ he taunted lightly mimicking her brogue, “you held with nawt a lick less detention then I settle on mine.”
“Well, of course not, what kind of teacher would I be if I didn't impress on them to mend their ways?”
”A poor one, Minerva, a poor one. I commend your dedication!” He lifted his glass in a toast. Holding back from expressing his sincere respect for her - even in private - needlessly pandering to Slytherin sensibilities to preserve the slimmest potential of spying at some future point seemed even more pointless now than previously, but he almost completely regretted his maudlin instinct only a moment later.
“Oooh, Severus,” she murmured sadly, a moment later. “Foolish boy, nothing is certain, yet.”
Lifting his glass in a delicate challenge, silently pointing out the well-meant lie in her words: neither of them were naive enough to believe she would be there so early in the year before the children had even settled in enough to discard manners, rules, and common sense and revert to the dunderheads, ruffians, louts, and slugs they tended towards mimicking -- if she didn't believe Trelawny's most recent prophecy at least as deeply as he.
“Still…” she protested, barely acknowledging the truth of his gesture, “There's room for translation… there's always room for translation."
- ”The Princely Heir
- this year shall fall.”
He murmered softly, his gentle tone, somehow sounding more final than Trelawny's wretching announcement had sounded in the great hall as it had shocked the assembled to silence... a rare feat.
Quietly, staring into her eyes -his obsidian gaze silently arguing the clarity of the words and his acceptance of their import - he continued:
"The potioneer’s eyes
- unclouded in death’s pall.
- Atlas' shoulders
- unburdened of oaths and old hate…
- Un-marked and free
- his past expiate.
- The stopper pulled,
- his task - fulfilled
- His future enured
- as Fates have willed.”