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Severus was beginning to suspect that Professor Kettleburn might in fact be dead.
It was one week into the spring term, but the new year was not the landmark by which Severus navigated. More properly speaking, it was two months since Lily had died; two months since the Dark Lord had supposedly been defeated; and two months since Severus himself had slept for more than an hour at a time. His head ached constantly, a nearly unbearable pressure throbbing between his temples and pushing at the backs of his eyes. Now and again he wondered if, in some jab of irony, he had survived the war only to develop a brain tumour.
His job was the only thing he had not yet lost, and he clung to it grimly. It forced him out of bed in the mornings and consumed his mind with its dull busywork and reassuring repetition. A part of him was certain that his failure to be sacked was an oversight, a to-do note lost in all the excitement of this brave new era, and so it was that he refused to draw attention to himself by admitting to anyone that next week’s lesson plan called for flobberworms and he had no idea where to find the Magical Creatures teacher.
Silvanus Kettleburn did not take meals in the Great Hall. He was, as Madam Pomfrey put it when Severus had inquired in a roundabout way, “of no fixed address,” apparently prone to changing his rooms seasonally in order to be closer to the thestrals or the owls or the hippogriffs in turn. His designated classroom always seemed to be empty, and he did not appear in the staff room, no matter how long or surreptitiously Severus surveilled it.
Severus was fairly certain that Professor Kettleburn had been present at the Christmas feast, sitting somewhere near the end of the table, next to Madam Hooch. He was even more certain, however, that the man had not attended either of the mandatory staff meetings held since then. At the time, he had assumed it was due to Kettleburn's status as an invalid and had envied him for it, but now he remembered hearing years ago that Professor Binns had been absent for three classes before any of his students had bothered to report him missing.
“Who here is enrolled in Care of Magical Creatures?” Severus finally asked his fifth-year Slytherins in desperation at the end of class on Friday.
A scattering of hands rose.
“Does anyone know where Professor Kettleburn can be found this afternoon?”
Miss Hollingberry in the front row bit her lip and then said, “It’s his office hours until four o'clock, sir. Room 214. Except...”
Severus did not hear what she meant to add, already stalking out of the classroom with great haste. It was five minutes to four o'clock, and the arteries of the school were clogging up with student traffic as the last classes of the day let out. He took the stairs hurriedly up to the second floor, and at the end of a long corridor found the office in question: locked and apparently deserted. He knocked on the door, but there was no reply.
The caretaker was mopping the floor a dozen doors down, bent over and grumbling to himself.
“Filch,” Severus said sharply. “Do you know where Professor Kettleburn is?” If the answer proved to be ‘rotting inside his office,’ it would be best for someone other than Severus to do the discovering.
“He’d be in town, wouldn’t he, sir,” Filch said, sounding, as he often did when he addressed Severus, as though he were kindly explaining something to a small and slightly slow child. “At the pub.”
Severus frowned. “The Three Broomsticks?”
“No, sir,” Filch said darkly, meeting Severus's confused expression with raised eyebrows and a lowered voice. “The other pub.”
All of which was how Severus found himself out in the wet January chill, tramping across the slick grass and snow-dusted paths to the lake. He did not know how to harness a thestral, and so the ferry was his only choice if he did not fancy the lengthy hike to town. The low boat propelled itself silently over the cold, still water. Severus sat perched on a narrow seat, shivering under his cloak and gazing down into the shadowy depths until the boat kissed the dock at the village mooring.
The town was quiet, shuttered in against the freezing rain that had now begun to fall in earnest. The streets were slippery, and Severus shuffled carefully on the worn soles of his boots, feeling the damp seep into his socks. By contrast, the Hog’s Head Inn proved to be warm and full of dry smoke and the twin aromas of ale and savouries. Severus paused just over the threshold, his hands and feet prickling as they thawed. He scanned the scruffy assembly. To his surprise, Professor Kettleburn was indeed there, sitting alone at a corner table—of which the pub seemed to consist entirely—with a pint glass in hand and a book in front of him.
Silvanus Kettleburn was a neat, almost dapper man of perhaps seventy years. His hair and beard were clipped short by wizarding standards, the former still mostly ginger and the latter entirely grey. The hand he drank with was real, and the one with which he turned the pages of his book consisted of both the usual flesh and a set of enchanted brass fingers held on by a criss-cross of thin leather straps. A stout walking stick leaned against the table.
Severus approached, reminding himself sternly that he was no longer a student and had no reason to drag his feet. Professor Kettleburn, apparently glimpsing him from the corner of his eye, held up a brass index finger to stay him and continued reading.
“If Albus sent you, tell him he can bugger off.”
Whatever Severus had been expecting, this was not it. “I...beg your pardon?”
Professor Kettleburn sighed and then deigned to look up from his book. His eyes were grey and sharp, set between winged eyebrows and a long, pointed nose. Severus, uncomfortable and irritated by having been made so, stared back with impertinence.
“Ah,” Professor Kettleburn said. “You’d be Professor Snape, wouldn’t you?”
“I would. I’m in need of sixty-four flobberworms for my class next week.”
Professor Kettleburn closed his book. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
The Naked Ape, Severus noted, unable to keep from glancing at the cover. The glossy dust jacket and cheap binding of the book declared it to be a Muggle publication. “I was hired in September.”
“Just so. Did you attend Hogwarts?”
Severus paused, blinking in surprise. He wondered if the man was in the early stages of senility. He had been a prefect for two years, after all, and he had always been under the impression that he was the bane of every teacher's existence, if only for his feud with Potter’s lot. “Yes. Of course I did.”
“Did you take my class?”
“No," he said. He had opted for Ancient Runes instead, having heard that Care of Magical Creatures was hands-on and outdoorsy.
A tight, almost mocking smile flashed across Professor Kettleburn’s face. “Then we should get along fine.” He gestured towards the chair opposite, and after a moment's pause, Severus sat down stiffly.
Something moved suddenly under the table, sending Severus scuffing back in his chair with a scrape of wood against wood. A wire-muzzled crup glanced up at him from between its master’s “feet” before returning to its enjoyment of a large soup bone.
Severus glared at it before returning his attention to Professor Kettleburn. “I was told these were your office hours."
“They are,” Professor Kettleburn said, as if he had not witnessed Severus’s moment of alarm. “This is where I hold them.”
Severus, red with annoyance at his own jitters, straightened his sleeves. “Your students don’t seem to be aware of that fact.”
“Fancy that,” Professor Kettleburn said blandly before draining the last of his pint.
“I was under the impression that keeping office hours wasn’t required.”
“Oh, it's not. Strictly optional.”
Severus narrowed his eyes. “Then why do you bother to hold them at all?”
Professor Kettleburn looked at him as though the answer were obvious. “Because if I didn't, my students might try to come to my office when I’m actually there.”
The laugh that escaped Severus’s throat was no more than a hard exhalation, and yet it startled him nonetheless. He could not immediately remember the last time he had found anything remotely funny—tried to cast his mind back, and still could not. Something twisted alarmingly in his chest, as if the unexpected noise had loosened a knot and anything might come out. He swallowed hard, locking it down with a faint, unpleasant click.
Head cocked, Professor Kettleburn looked him over probingly. Then he smiled again, and this time it touched his eyes. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like a man in dire need of a drink?”
“No,” Severus admitted. “I don’t believe anyone has.”
“Misplaced politeness, I’m sure,” Professor Kettleburn said. “You can buy the next round, and I’ll see what I can do about your flobberworms. Provided we can keep my second office between ourselves.”
Somehow, Severus ended up drinking two hours away in the coarse and comfortable confines of the Hog’s Head as he and Professor Kettleburn worked their way through the overlap in their curricula. In welcome contrast to his previous dealings with the rest of the staff, there was not a single admonishment for him to smile or to “buck up.” Neither were there any questions as to why he looked so low. There was only cider and school business and a smattering of small talk.
His headache was worse than ever after the third pint, and the cold air did little to improve it on the journey back to the castle. He rode in the carriage that Professor Kettleburn had travelled in, and he looked out the window at the dark sky until his eyes burned, at which point he rubbed them until he saw stars, sighing when the pressure eased a little. Professor Kettleburn politely ignored him.
It did not strike him at the time as a day that would upset the course of his life. Even later, after the fog had cleared, he would point out that it was only a meeting, nothing more. That night, however, as he lay restless and exhausted and painfully awake in his bed, poring over the minutiae of every moment of the day, he wondered, perhaps, if it would look good if he set up office hours of his own.