Into the Fold, Chapter Thirty-seven
Title: Into the Fold
Author: Pasi
Rating: 15
Category: Gen
Fic Summary: Severus Snape is going straight to hell. The people he calls his friends are helping him get there.
Chapter Summary: Severus goes for an interview and stumbles on a prophecy.
Chapter Index
Two Interviews
Spring 1980
The Dark Lord gave the Daily Prophet and The Chronicle of Wizarding Education to Severus. He took them home, wrote his cover letter and CV and sent them "to the attention of Headmaster A.P.W.B. Dumbledore, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
In less than a week a red-sealed envelope appeared in the owl post box outside his window. He opened the envelope, pulled out the letter and read:
Dear Mr Snape:
Having reviewed your application for the position of Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts, I should like to invite you to interview for the job.
If you can meet me for the interview in the Hog's Head Tavern, Hogsmeade, on 26 March at seven o'clock in the evening, please respond by return post at your earliest convenience.
Thank you for your application and your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Severus stared at the letter. He'd made it. Well, the first step, anyway.
But the Hog's Head Tavern? Wasn't that the place on a side street in Hogsmeade, run-down, patronised by the disreputable, that people said smelled like a goat-pen in need of cleaning? Why would Dumbledore want to interview a prospective professor there? Never mind how the interviewee might feel, what about Dumbledore himself? He was someone who seemed to like his creature comforts. Why give them up? Why not interview the candidates in his office?
Unless he wanted to be secretive about it. The Hog's Head was well off the beaten track--so far off that Severus had never been inside.
But why be secretive? Because he's Dumbledore, thought Severus. Besides, it didn't matter. The Dark Lord wanted him to take this job. Just as importantly, Severus wanted it. In the past couple of years, he hadn't thought about much beyond getting a toehold in the world of work as an Apothecary at St Mungo's and finding peace in his private life. Yet if you'd asked him while he was at school what was his dream career, he might very well have said a professor at Hogwarts. If he had been able to imagine that such a career could be within his reach.
Severus sat down at once and composed a reply to Professor Dumbledore:
Dear Sir:
Thank you for agreeing to interview me for the position of Hogwarts Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts. As per your letter, I shall meet you for the interview at the Hog's Head, at seven o'clock on 26 March.
Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Severus Snape
Severus sealed the letter and took it to the post office, where he rented a tough-looking tawny owl to carry it from London to the Scottish Highlands, to Hogwarts Castle.
****
Severus made a scheduling switch with Bermsley so that he could get the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of March off without having to explain to Apothecary Morgan why he needed the time. "Oh, for an interview for a much better job than this one, that I'll snap up the moment it's offered to me!" That would certainly go over well.
He took an express train to Hogsmeade. As he had no intention of staying in the Hog's Head any longer than he had to, he took a room at the Three Broomsticks and ate his dinner before embarking for the Hog's Head.
By then it was pouring rain. Under the storm's lash, piles of slush melted into puddles the size of small ponds, around which Severus carefully picked his way. Perhaps he should have asked whether the Hog's Head, like the Three Broomsticks, was linked to the Floo Network, but he was afraid the Hog's Head might have the sort of filthy, half-blocked chimney where you could get stuck and suffocate on the smoke. He was probably safer walking.
Finally he arrived. In the dark entryway of the Hog's Head, he wiped his feet on a ratty door mat and shook the raindrops off his travelling-cloak. Then he went inside.
The smell hit him first, rank, with an overlay of goat. But at least the place was warm and dry, thanks to a bright fire in the grate, whose light caused the shadows of two patrons seated at a table to dance on the nearby wall. Neither of the customers was Professor Dumbledore--far from it--and there was no one at the bar.
He couldn't have been early. It had taken too long to walk from the Three Broomsticks. Was he late? Had Dumbledore already left? Severus pulled out his watch. 7:05. He was a little late, but surely Dumbledore would have waited five minutes?
"Lookin' fer someone?"
Severus looked up. One of the customers, a fellow with three days' worth of stubble on his chin and a cold pipe in his hand, looked back.
"Er, yes, actually," said Severus. "I have an appointment." How stupid did that sound? "You haven't seen a--ah--wizard, have you? Long white beard, half-moon spectacles, glittering robes?"
"You mean Dumbledore?" said the other patron, a scrawny wizard with a large Adam's apple and a squeaky voice.
"You know him?" said Severus, startled.
"Sure we do," said the first wizard, who, having taken a pouch out of his pocket, was tamping tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. "Comes in all the time, doesn't he?"
"I don't know," said Severus. "Does he?"
"Why wouldn't he, when his own--" The wizard halted suddenly in the act of lighting his pipe with his wand. "You don't seem to know Professor Dumbledore very well. Why are you meeting him here?"
You tell me, Severus thought. "I've come for an interview. He's hiring staff for next year. You do know he's the Headmaster of Hogwarts, don't you?"
"'Course we do!" The wizard stopped. He took his pipe out of his mouth and stared with slackened jaw at his scrawny mate. "So that's what they were going upstairs for!"
They both shouted with laughter. The skinny wizard ended up hiccoughing for breath, so that his Adam's apple bounced up and down in his throat. "Didn't I say he'd never--"
"No!" gasped the other. "You said you'd never, not in a million years, she wasn't your type!"
Severus waited until their laughter wound down to stupid-looking grins. "Do you think you could answer my question? Have you seen Professor Dumbledore?"
The first wizard put his pipe into his mouth and jerked his thumb toward a dusty-looking staircase. "Up there," he said around the pipe stem.
"Having an interview with the lady," giggled his skinny friend.
As unbelievable as those two seemed to think it, that was probably the truth. Competition, Severus thought.
He didn't want the competition to edge him out of a job. Neither, he surmised, did the Dark Lord. Was there any way to find out how the competition was doing?
Severus headed for the staircase, to the sound of the wizards snickering behind him. He tiptoed up the stairs, for he doubted either interviewer or interviewee would care to know there was an eavesdropper around.
For eavesdropping, Severus now realised, was exactly what he intended to do.
He reached the landing and entered a hallway lined on both sides with scratched and peeling doorways. He was used to rough accommodations--Spinner's End and Linden Lane came to mind--yet he couldn't imagine spending a night here. How Dumbledore could think of holding job interviews here--
The sound of voices behind the first of the doors cut off Severus's train of thought.
Male and female voices, murmuring indistinctly. Severus hesitated a moment--what if the wizards downstairs were right, and Dumbledore was entertaining the witch, not interviewing her? No, Dumbledore would never do that. Not now. Unless he'd forgotten that he'd also scheduled an interview with Severus.
There was only one way to find out if Dumbledore was interviewing the witch. And if he was, there was only one way to find out if he wanted to hire her for the job Severus sought.
Severus bent down and put his ear to the keyhole.
"I'll be frank," Dumbledore was saying easily. "I've never set much store by Divination. But it is a required part of the curriculum, and the current incumbent having seen with her own Inner Eye herself struck dead in the traces if she did not retire within the year, I am, as you can see, in need."
"I knew you were in need," the witch said dreamily. "Which is why I was not in the least surprised to find your advertisement in The Seer's Catalogue when I opened it last week."
"Fascinating," said Dumbledore. "And did you sense my reservations as well?"
"There are always frauds, of course. One does not need to possess the powers of the Inner Eye--as I do in abundance--to see that."
"Indeed not," Dumbledore sighed. "One needs only to have lived upon this earth for a certain number of years. No doubt, however," he said more cheerfully, "as you are not a fraud--you would never have presumed to apply if you were--you can make me a prediction."
"A--a prediction?"
"Why, yes. Perhaps you can tell me which House team will win our school Quidditch Cup this year?"
There was a silence.
"Or, failing that, perhaps you could tell me what the Hogwarts house elves plan on serving for dinner next Tuesday?"
Another pause. Then the witch said loftily, "The Inner Eye does not submit itself to mortal commands."
Severus swallowed his snort of contempt. All fortune-tellers were frauds--he agreed with Dumbledore on that. This one was no different. Certainly she was no competition for him, in any sense.
He heard a chair scrape inside the room. "I'm grateful to you, Miss Trelawney, for taking the trouble to accommodate me for an interview," Dumbledore said. "It makes me very sorry, therefore, to have to tell you that I don't believe you would be suitable for the post of Divination teacher at my school."
Severus straightened. He might as well go back downstairs and wait his turn. The only reason he hadn't gone down before this was that he hadn't fancied renewing pleasantries with the pipe-smoking wizard and his scrawny friend. But perhaps they'd left, and if they hadn't, he knew enough to ignore them.
Then, from the other side of the door, came the unmistakable sound of someone choking. Frowning, Severus bent back to the keyhole.
"Miss Trelawney?" Dumbledore's voice held a note of alarm. "Are you all right?"
The answer came in a harsh, deep voice Severus didn't recognise. The sound of it alone sent a chill through him. And then he heard the words.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches.... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...."
My God. Severus pressed his ear closer, against the cold metal of the lock plate. Then a vice clamped down on his arm. He was yanked upright and wheeled around.
The vice was a knobby-knuckled, work-roughened hand. The hand belonged to a wizard with wild white hair and beard, who wore a rain-spattered farmer's smock and smelled like a barnyard.
"What do you think you're doing?" the old wizard demanded.
"Why--er--nothing!"
"Eavesdropping on my guests!"
"I wasn't eavesdropping! I was just waiting--"
"Liar!" The wizard's voice rose to a shout. He shoved Severus hard, down a couple of stair steps. Angered, Severus went for his wand, but the old wizard pulled his first and pointed it at Severus's chest. The door opened then, and light spilled into the hall.
Dumbledore stood in the doorway, looking from Severus fumbling in his robes to the furious old wizard, wand out, hair flaring around his head like a silvery corona. "Is something wrong?"
Severus drew his hand from his robes and stood gaping and speechless, watching his hopes for a professorship at Hogwarts swirl down the drain.
"I came upstairs to see if Miss Trelawney needed anything, and I found him!" The wizard shook his wand at Severus, who dodged a shower of sparks. "Eavesdropping!"
"Calm down, Aberforth," said Dumbledore. He turned. "Severus?"
"You know him?" Aberforth demanded.
"Quite well, in fact. I'm sure he meant no harm. Why did you come up here, Severus?"
"Our interview, sir...it's past seven o'clock...I thought...." Miss Trelawney edged around Dumbledore as Severus spoke. She was a thin witch, with round-lensed spectacles that seemed to magnify her eyes.
"I was looking for you, sir," Severus said.
"In my room?" said Miss Trelawney, looking theatrically offended.
Severus looked at her. Gone was the deep, hoarse, bone-shaking voice; she spoke in tones only ordinarily shrill. She looked perfectly commonplace, perfectly unaware of what had just happened in her room. "I came the wrong way."
"You came exactly the wrong way if what you wanted was to peep and listen at keyholes!" said Aberforth.
"Peep and listen!" squeaked Miss Trelawney.
"That's right, and I won't have it!" Aberforth backed Severus down the stairs at the end of his wand. "I want you out of my tavern, off this property now!"
The ruckus brought the pipe-smoker and the scrawny wizard to the bottom of the stairs, where they hooted taunts at Severus. "I do have an interview with him, Aberforth," said Dumbledore, his voice nearly drowned in the tumult of the wizards' laughter and Miss Trelawney's scandalised shrieks ("I never--! I knew this place was disreputable, but really!").
Without taking his wand off Severus, Aberforth shouted over his shoulder. "I've had reason to mistrust your judgement before! If you want to interview him--if you want to take the chance of exposing schoolchildren to him--you can interview him at Hogwarts!"
Burning with rage and humiliation, Severus broke and ran, pausing in the entryway only long enough to grab his travelling cloak before he burst through the door of the Hog's Head Tavern, slammed it furiously and raced out into the rain.
****
With the mud sucking at his boots, Severus's run soon slowed to a trudge, and his fury melted into despondent fear. He hadn't got the job, that place next to Dumbledore that the Dark Lord wanted him to get. He hadn't even got an interview. What would be the Dark Lord's reaction to a Death Eater who had failed so miserably at his first assignment?
Had he failed, though? He wondered as walking wore out his fret. What about Miss Trelawney's strange fit? Fit, or trance? What about those words, spoken by a prospective Divination teacher, which had sounded very much like a prophecy?
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches.... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...."
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. Miss Trelawney's words were shocking enough. But her choking before she'd said them, the harsh tone in which she'd spoken them, the fact that she didn't seem to remember afterward a single word she'd said.... Was she like the oracles of old, who, struck into foaming fits by the gods, had prophesied truly?
Severus started at a loud pop! beside his ear. He jumped back when Dumbledore appeared.
Dumbledore's face was nearly covered by his hood, but Severus recognised him by his long white beard, which moved as he tilted his chin toward the Hog's Head. "He lets me Apparate in and out. Fortunately, or I might not have caught up with you."
They were approaching the Hogsmeade high street. Looking at Dumbledore, Severus hardly knew what to say.
Dumbledore sighed. "I apologise for the fracas back there."
"It wasn't your fault. The landlord got upset."
"Still, I feel responsible. You were rattled just before our interview." Dumbledore glanced again toward the Hog's Head. "Would you like to go back anyway and give it a try?"
"He wants me off his property."
"Oh, that. I've fixed things up with Aberforth. He'll lend us a parlour."
Just like the old Patronus-conjuring days. "All right."
They walked back towards the Hog's Head. "If you do come to work at Hogwarts, Miss Trelawney will be a colleague," Dumbledore said. "I was interviewing her when Aberforth interrupted, and I've decided to hire her as Divination professor. I hope that won't be a problem?"
Severus looked at Dumbledore, but, through rain and darkness, his hooded form revealed nothing.
Before her fit, Dumbledore had turned down Miss Trelawney's application. After her fit, he wanted to hire her.
"No," said Severus. "That won't be a problem."
They returned to the Hog's Head. They passed the bar under Aberforth's cold blue gaze and entered a parlour. They sat, and Dumbledore pulled out a paper.
"Your curriculum vitae." He scanned it, returned it to his pocket and looked up. "It's quite impressive, really. You had very good marks while you were at Hogwarts. I'd forgotten that, since you weren't first in your year."
Potter had been first, with Lily a hair's breadth behind. Severus maintained his pleasantly neutral expression.
Dumbledore pulled more papers from his pocket and looked them over. "All good evaluations at St Mungo's. You're a good Apothecary. Good enough for Barty Crouch to recruit you for his project in Azkaban."
"Recruit" wasn't the word Severus would have used.
"The Wizengamot appointed me to the commission that investigated the project's failure. Reid and Crouch are entirely to blame. They should have known that Dementors wouldn't simply stand--or drift--by while a prisoner was being interrogated." Dumbledore looked at Severus over the top of his glasses. "You did well, dispelling them. Combating vicious Dark magic. Just the experience I need in a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor."
"Thank you, sir."
Dumbledore smiled. "So carefully modest! I haven't finished praising you yet. I'm impressed by the way you and James Potter linked your Patronuses, doubling your magic to drive off the Dementors. Most impressed."
Severus remembered their gaping maws, his own desperation. "It was a matter of survival."
"It often is, where the Dark Arts are concerned." Dumbledore consulted his papers. "And then there's Sectumsempra."
Severus said nothing.
"You healed Auror Dawlish of it. You gave Textum to Healers Sage and Wort." Dumbledore smiled. "That raced through St Mungo's like wildfire. I do wonder, though, how the Death Eaters learned Sectumsempra?"
Severus was ready. "The Whomping Willow wasn't the only time I used Sectumsempra. I was known for it in school, actually. Nothing so severe as the spell I cast on James Potter."
"Or I would have heard of it."
"Yes, sir. I suppose someone saw it who was clever enough to pick it up." Severus paused. "I regret that."
Dumbledore eyed him. As if responding to an instinct he hardly sensed, the Mental Mantle cast itself over Severus's mind, rippling into folds like the corrugations of his brain.
"Indeed," said Dumbledore. "I am, after all, looking for a professor who defends against the Dark Arts, not one who practises them."
Severus ducked his head, looking down at his hands folded in his lap. No doubt he looked ashamed, which he wanted to do, but he also avoided Dumbledore's searching eyes.
"On the other hand, there's your Patronus," Dumbledore said softly. "And your creation of Textum." He was silent for a moment, then said, "Tell me, Severus. Why do you want to be the Hogwarts Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts?"
Severus looked up.
"It's a fine line, isn't it, sir? To defend against the Dark Arts, you have to understand them. You have to know how a curse will react to the magic, the intention, the personality of the wizard who's casting it. To understand something as complicated as the Dark Arts, to learn it, you have to be--very interested in it."
He'd almost said fascinated. Dumbledore obliged. "Fascinated by the Dark Arts, you mean."
Severus proceeded carefully. "I think you have to be like Healer Meed, sir. You remember when I was training with her."
"Very well."
"She's acquainted with a great deal that's Dark. I'm sure she has to be, in her job as a Psychic Healer. And you said she went to school at Durmstrang Institute. They teach the Dark Arts there."
"That's so." Dumbledore was giving Severus his full attention.
"So I'm certain she understands the Dark Arts, perhaps as well as anybody I've ever met. Perhaps as well as anybody can. And yet she isn't Dark."
Dumbledore seemed to hesitate. "No, she isn't," he said after a moment.
"I want to be like Healer Meed. I want to master the Dark Arts, not be mastered by them," said Severus, and it was true. He didn't want to be Ruskin or Bellatrix Lestrange, driven mad with devotion. "I think I could do that as professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts. I think you fully master a subject by teaching it, don't you agree?"
Again Dumbledore did not immediately answer. "Yes," he said slowly. "Yes, I do." There was another silence, during which Dumbledore fussed with his papers, folding them and returning them to his pocket. "Well, this has certainly been an interesting interview." He glanced ruefully at the door, on the other side of which, Severus supposed, Aberforth still stood behind his bar. "And more stressful than it needed to be. You've been very patient, Severus." He rose, extending his hand; Severus stood and shook it. "Thank you for coming, and for putting up with, ah--things. Were you listening at the keyhole, by the way?"
"I heard a choking sound. I thought someone had been taken ill."
"Was that all you heard?"
"Yes."
Dumbledore surveyed him. The Mantle, soft and filmy, yielded without giving way. "Miss Trelawney was upset, you understand. I want to be able to assure her that our conversation remained private."
"Of course, sir. I understand."
"Good, then. Good." Looking preoccupied, Dumbledore turned toward the door.
"When may I expect to hear from you, sir?"
"Hear from--? Oh, I'm sorry, the professorship!" What else? Severus wondered, while Dumbledore stood for a moment with his head cocked. "Give me a week. I'll know my decision then. I'll owl you."
"Thank you, sir."
"You're quite welcome." The Headmaster held the door open, and with great effort Severus avoided giving him an odd look as he went out.
Author: Pasi
Rating: 15
Category: Gen
Fic Summary: Severus Snape is going straight to hell. The people he calls his friends are helping him get there.
Chapter Summary: Severus goes for an interview and stumbles on a prophecy.
Chapter Index
Two Interviews
Spring 1980
The Dark Lord gave the Daily Prophet and The Chronicle of Wizarding Education to Severus. He took them home, wrote his cover letter and CV and sent them "to the attention of Headmaster A.P.W.B. Dumbledore, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
In less than a week a red-sealed envelope appeared in the owl post box outside his window. He opened the envelope, pulled out the letter and read:
Dear Mr Snape:
Having reviewed your application for the position of Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts, I should like to invite you to interview for the job.
If you can meet me for the interview in the Hog's Head Tavern, Hogsmeade, on 26 March at seven o'clock in the evening, please respond by return post at your earliest convenience.
Thank you for your application and your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Severus stared at the letter. He'd made it. Well, the first step, anyway.
But the Hog's Head Tavern? Wasn't that the place on a side street in Hogsmeade, run-down, patronised by the disreputable, that people said smelled like a goat-pen in need of cleaning? Why would Dumbledore want to interview a prospective professor there? Never mind how the interviewee might feel, what about Dumbledore himself? He was someone who seemed to like his creature comforts. Why give them up? Why not interview the candidates in his office?
Unless he wanted to be secretive about it. The Hog's Head was well off the beaten track--so far off that Severus had never been inside.
But why be secretive? Because he's Dumbledore, thought Severus. Besides, it didn't matter. The Dark Lord wanted him to take this job. Just as importantly, Severus wanted it. In the past couple of years, he hadn't thought about much beyond getting a toehold in the world of work as an Apothecary at St Mungo's and finding peace in his private life. Yet if you'd asked him while he was at school what was his dream career, he might very well have said a professor at Hogwarts. If he had been able to imagine that such a career could be within his reach.
Severus sat down at once and composed a reply to Professor Dumbledore:
Dear Sir:
Thank you for agreeing to interview me for the position of Hogwarts Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts. As per your letter, I shall meet you for the interview at the Hog's Head, at seven o'clock on 26 March.
Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Severus Snape
Severus sealed the letter and took it to the post office, where he rented a tough-looking tawny owl to carry it from London to the Scottish Highlands, to Hogwarts Castle.
****
Severus made a scheduling switch with Bermsley so that he could get the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of March off without having to explain to Apothecary Morgan why he needed the time. "Oh, for an interview for a much better job than this one, that I'll snap up the moment it's offered to me!" That would certainly go over well.
He took an express train to Hogsmeade. As he had no intention of staying in the Hog's Head any longer than he had to, he took a room at the Three Broomsticks and ate his dinner before embarking for the Hog's Head.
By then it was pouring rain. Under the storm's lash, piles of slush melted into puddles the size of small ponds, around which Severus carefully picked his way. Perhaps he should have asked whether the Hog's Head, like the Three Broomsticks, was linked to the Floo Network, but he was afraid the Hog's Head might have the sort of filthy, half-blocked chimney where you could get stuck and suffocate on the smoke. He was probably safer walking.
Finally he arrived. In the dark entryway of the Hog's Head, he wiped his feet on a ratty door mat and shook the raindrops off his travelling-cloak. Then he went inside.
The smell hit him first, rank, with an overlay of goat. But at least the place was warm and dry, thanks to a bright fire in the grate, whose light caused the shadows of two patrons seated at a table to dance on the nearby wall. Neither of the customers was Professor Dumbledore--far from it--and there was no one at the bar.
He couldn't have been early. It had taken too long to walk from the Three Broomsticks. Was he late? Had Dumbledore already left? Severus pulled out his watch. 7:05. He was a little late, but surely Dumbledore would have waited five minutes?
"Lookin' fer someone?"
Severus looked up. One of the customers, a fellow with three days' worth of stubble on his chin and a cold pipe in his hand, looked back.
"Er, yes, actually," said Severus. "I have an appointment." How stupid did that sound? "You haven't seen a--ah--wizard, have you? Long white beard, half-moon spectacles, glittering robes?"
"You mean Dumbledore?" said the other patron, a scrawny wizard with a large Adam's apple and a squeaky voice.
"You know him?" said Severus, startled.
"Sure we do," said the first wizard, who, having taken a pouch out of his pocket, was tamping tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. "Comes in all the time, doesn't he?"
"I don't know," said Severus. "Does he?"
"Why wouldn't he, when his own--" The wizard halted suddenly in the act of lighting his pipe with his wand. "You don't seem to know Professor Dumbledore very well. Why are you meeting him here?"
You tell me, Severus thought. "I've come for an interview. He's hiring staff for next year. You do know he's the Headmaster of Hogwarts, don't you?"
"'Course we do!" The wizard stopped. He took his pipe out of his mouth and stared with slackened jaw at his scrawny mate. "So that's what they were going upstairs for!"
They both shouted with laughter. The skinny wizard ended up hiccoughing for breath, so that his Adam's apple bounced up and down in his throat. "Didn't I say he'd never--"
"No!" gasped the other. "You said you'd never, not in a million years, she wasn't your type!"
Severus waited until their laughter wound down to stupid-looking grins. "Do you think you could answer my question? Have you seen Professor Dumbledore?"
The first wizard put his pipe into his mouth and jerked his thumb toward a dusty-looking staircase. "Up there," he said around the pipe stem.
"Having an interview with the lady," giggled his skinny friend.
As unbelievable as those two seemed to think it, that was probably the truth. Competition, Severus thought.
He didn't want the competition to edge him out of a job. Neither, he surmised, did the Dark Lord. Was there any way to find out how the competition was doing?
Severus headed for the staircase, to the sound of the wizards snickering behind him. He tiptoed up the stairs, for he doubted either interviewer or interviewee would care to know there was an eavesdropper around.
For eavesdropping, Severus now realised, was exactly what he intended to do.
He reached the landing and entered a hallway lined on both sides with scratched and peeling doorways. He was used to rough accommodations--Spinner's End and Linden Lane came to mind--yet he couldn't imagine spending a night here. How Dumbledore could think of holding job interviews here--
The sound of voices behind the first of the doors cut off Severus's train of thought.
Male and female voices, murmuring indistinctly. Severus hesitated a moment--what if the wizards downstairs were right, and Dumbledore was entertaining the witch, not interviewing her? No, Dumbledore would never do that. Not now. Unless he'd forgotten that he'd also scheduled an interview with Severus.
There was only one way to find out if Dumbledore was interviewing the witch. And if he was, there was only one way to find out if he wanted to hire her for the job Severus sought.
Severus bent down and put his ear to the keyhole.
"I'll be frank," Dumbledore was saying easily. "I've never set much store by Divination. But it is a required part of the curriculum, and the current incumbent having seen with her own Inner Eye herself struck dead in the traces if she did not retire within the year, I am, as you can see, in need."
"I knew you were in need," the witch said dreamily. "Which is why I was not in the least surprised to find your advertisement in The Seer's Catalogue when I opened it last week."
"Fascinating," said Dumbledore. "And did you sense my reservations as well?"
"There are always frauds, of course. One does not need to possess the powers of the Inner Eye--as I do in abundance--to see that."
"Indeed not," Dumbledore sighed. "One needs only to have lived upon this earth for a certain number of years. No doubt, however," he said more cheerfully, "as you are not a fraud--you would never have presumed to apply if you were--you can make me a prediction."
"A--a prediction?"
"Why, yes. Perhaps you can tell me which House team will win our school Quidditch Cup this year?"
There was a silence.
"Or, failing that, perhaps you could tell me what the Hogwarts house elves plan on serving for dinner next Tuesday?"
Another pause. Then the witch said loftily, "The Inner Eye does not submit itself to mortal commands."
Severus swallowed his snort of contempt. All fortune-tellers were frauds--he agreed with Dumbledore on that. This one was no different. Certainly she was no competition for him, in any sense.
He heard a chair scrape inside the room. "I'm grateful to you, Miss Trelawney, for taking the trouble to accommodate me for an interview," Dumbledore said. "It makes me very sorry, therefore, to have to tell you that I don't believe you would be suitable for the post of Divination teacher at my school."
Severus straightened. He might as well go back downstairs and wait his turn. The only reason he hadn't gone down before this was that he hadn't fancied renewing pleasantries with the pipe-smoking wizard and his scrawny friend. But perhaps they'd left, and if they hadn't, he knew enough to ignore them.
Then, from the other side of the door, came the unmistakable sound of someone choking. Frowning, Severus bent back to the keyhole.
"Miss Trelawney?" Dumbledore's voice held a note of alarm. "Are you all right?"
The answer came in a harsh, deep voice Severus didn't recognise. The sound of it alone sent a chill through him. And then he heard the words.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches.... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...."
My God. Severus pressed his ear closer, against the cold metal of the lock plate. Then a vice clamped down on his arm. He was yanked upright and wheeled around.
The vice was a knobby-knuckled, work-roughened hand. The hand belonged to a wizard with wild white hair and beard, who wore a rain-spattered farmer's smock and smelled like a barnyard.
"What do you think you're doing?" the old wizard demanded.
"Why--er--nothing!"
"Eavesdropping on my guests!"
"I wasn't eavesdropping! I was just waiting--"
"Liar!" The wizard's voice rose to a shout. He shoved Severus hard, down a couple of stair steps. Angered, Severus went for his wand, but the old wizard pulled his first and pointed it at Severus's chest. The door opened then, and light spilled into the hall.
Dumbledore stood in the doorway, looking from Severus fumbling in his robes to the furious old wizard, wand out, hair flaring around his head like a silvery corona. "Is something wrong?"
Severus drew his hand from his robes and stood gaping and speechless, watching his hopes for a professorship at Hogwarts swirl down the drain.
"I came upstairs to see if Miss Trelawney needed anything, and I found him!" The wizard shook his wand at Severus, who dodged a shower of sparks. "Eavesdropping!"
"Calm down, Aberforth," said Dumbledore. He turned. "Severus?"
"You know him?" Aberforth demanded.
"Quite well, in fact. I'm sure he meant no harm. Why did you come up here, Severus?"
"Our interview, sir...it's past seven o'clock...I thought...." Miss Trelawney edged around Dumbledore as Severus spoke. She was a thin witch, with round-lensed spectacles that seemed to magnify her eyes.
"I was looking for you, sir," Severus said.
"In my room?" said Miss Trelawney, looking theatrically offended.
Severus looked at her. Gone was the deep, hoarse, bone-shaking voice; she spoke in tones only ordinarily shrill. She looked perfectly commonplace, perfectly unaware of what had just happened in her room. "I came the wrong way."
"You came exactly the wrong way if what you wanted was to peep and listen at keyholes!" said Aberforth.
"Peep and listen!" squeaked Miss Trelawney.
"That's right, and I won't have it!" Aberforth backed Severus down the stairs at the end of his wand. "I want you out of my tavern, off this property now!"
The ruckus brought the pipe-smoker and the scrawny wizard to the bottom of the stairs, where they hooted taunts at Severus. "I do have an interview with him, Aberforth," said Dumbledore, his voice nearly drowned in the tumult of the wizards' laughter and Miss Trelawney's scandalised shrieks ("I never--! I knew this place was disreputable, but really!").
Without taking his wand off Severus, Aberforth shouted over his shoulder. "I've had reason to mistrust your judgement before! If you want to interview him--if you want to take the chance of exposing schoolchildren to him--you can interview him at Hogwarts!"
Burning with rage and humiliation, Severus broke and ran, pausing in the entryway only long enough to grab his travelling cloak before he burst through the door of the Hog's Head Tavern, slammed it furiously and raced out into the rain.
****
With the mud sucking at his boots, Severus's run soon slowed to a trudge, and his fury melted into despondent fear. He hadn't got the job, that place next to Dumbledore that the Dark Lord wanted him to get. He hadn't even got an interview. What would be the Dark Lord's reaction to a Death Eater who had failed so miserably at his first assignment?
Had he failed, though? He wondered as walking wore out his fret. What about Miss Trelawney's strange fit? Fit, or trance? What about those words, spoken by a prospective Divination teacher, which had sounded very much like a prophecy?
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches.... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...."
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. Miss Trelawney's words were shocking enough. But her choking before she'd said them, the harsh tone in which she'd spoken them, the fact that she didn't seem to remember afterward a single word she'd said.... Was she like the oracles of old, who, struck into foaming fits by the gods, had prophesied truly?
Severus started at a loud pop! beside his ear. He jumped back when Dumbledore appeared.
Dumbledore's face was nearly covered by his hood, but Severus recognised him by his long white beard, which moved as he tilted his chin toward the Hog's Head. "He lets me Apparate in and out. Fortunately, or I might not have caught up with you."
They were approaching the Hogsmeade high street. Looking at Dumbledore, Severus hardly knew what to say.
Dumbledore sighed. "I apologise for the fracas back there."
"It wasn't your fault. The landlord got upset."
"Still, I feel responsible. You were rattled just before our interview." Dumbledore glanced again toward the Hog's Head. "Would you like to go back anyway and give it a try?"
"He wants me off his property."
"Oh, that. I've fixed things up with Aberforth. He'll lend us a parlour."
Just like the old Patronus-conjuring days. "All right."
They walked back towards the Hog's Head. "If you do come to work at Hogwarts, Miss Trelawney will be a colleague," Dumbledore said. "I was interviewing her when Aberforth interrupted, and I've decided to hire her as Divination professor. I hope that won't be a problem?"
Severus looked at Dumbledore, but, through rain and darkness, his hooded form revealed nothing.
Before her fit, Dumbledore had turned down Miss Trelawney's application. After her fit, he wanted to hire her.
"No," said Severus. "That won't be a problem."
They returned to the Hog's Head. They passed the bar under Aberforth's cold blue gaze and entered a parlour. They sat, and Dumbledore pulled out a paper.
"Your curriculum vitae." He scanned it, returned it to his pocket and looked up. "It's quite impressive, really. You had very good marks while you were at Hogwarts. I'd forgotten that, since you weren't first in your year."
Potter had been first, with Lily a hair's breadth behind. Severus maintained his pleasantly neutral expression.
Dumbledore pulled more papers from his pocket and looked them over. "All good evaluations at St Mungo's. You're a good Apothecary. Good enough for Barty Crouch to recruit you for his project in Azkaban."
"Recruit" wasn't the word Severus would have used.
"The Wizengamot appointed me to the commission that investigated the project's failure. Reid and Crouch are entirely to blame. They should have known that Dementors wouldn't simply stand--or drift--by while a prisoner was being interrogated." Dumbledore looked at Severus over the top of his glasses. "You did well, dispelling them. Combating vicious Dark magic. Just the experience I need in a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor."
"Thank you, sir."
Dumbledore smiled. "So carefully modest! I haven't finished praising you yet. I'm impressed by the way you and James Potter linked your Patronuses, doubling your magic to drive off the Dementors. Most impressed."
Severus remembered their gaping maws, his own desperation. "It was a matter of survival."
"It often is, where the Dark Arts are concerned." Dumbledore consulted his papers. "And then there's Sectumsempra."
Severus said nothing.
"You healed Auror Dawlish of it. You gave Textum to Healers Sage and Wort." Dumbledore smiled. "That raced through St Mungo's like wildfire. I do wonder, though, how the Death Eaters learned Sectumsempra?"
Severus was ready. "The Whomping Willow wasn't the only time I used Sectumsempra. I was known for it in school, actually. Nothing so severe as the spell I cast on James Potter."
"Or I would have heard of it."
"Yes, sir. I suppose someone saw it who was clever enough to pick it up." Severus paused. "I regret that."
Dumbledore eyed him. As if responding to an instinct he hardly sensed, the Mental Mantle cast itself over Severus's mind, rippling into folds like the corrugations of his brain.
"Indeed," said Dumbledore. "I am, after all, looking for a professor who defends against the Dark Arts, not one who practises them."
Severus ducked his head, looking down at his hands folded in his lap. No doubt he looked ashamed, which he wanted to do, but he also avoided Dumbledore's searching eyes.
"On the other hand, there's your Patronus," Dumbledore said softly. "And your creation of Textum." He was silent for a moment, then said, "Tell me, Severus. Why do you want to be the Hogwarts Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts?"
Severus looked up.
"It's a fine line, isn't it, sir? To defend against the Dark Arts, you have to understand them. You have to know how a curse will react to the magic, the intention, the personality of the wizard who's casting it. To understand something as complicated as the Dark Arts, to learn it, you have to be--very interested in it."
He'd almost said fascinated. Dumbledore obliged. "Fascinated by the Dark Arts, you mean."
Severus proceeded carefully. "I think you have to be like Healer Meed, sir. You remember when I was training with her."
"Very well."
"She's acquainted with a great deal that's Dark. I'm sure she has to be, in her job as a Psychic Healer. And you said she went to school at Durmstrang Institute. They teach the Dark Arts there."
"That's so." Dumbledore was giving Severus his full attention.
"So I'm certain she understands the Dark Arts, perhaps as well as anybody I've ever met. Perhaps as well as anybody can. And yet she isn't Dark."
Dumbledore seemed to hesitate. "No, she isn't," he said after a moment.
"I want to be like Healer Meed. I want to master the Dark Arts, not be mastered by them," said Severus, and it was true. He didn't want to be Ruskin or Bellatrix Lestrange, driven mad with devotion. "I think I could do that as professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts. I think you fully master a subject by teaching it, don't you agree?"
Again Dumbledore did not immediately answer. "Yes," he said slowly. "Yes, I do." There was another silence, during which Dumbledore fussed with his papers, folding them and returning them to his pocket. "Well, this has certainly been an interesting interview." He glanced ruefully at the door, on the other side of which, Severus supposed, Aberforth still stood behind his bar. "And more stressful than it needed to be. You've been very patient, Severus." He rose, extending his hand; Severus stood and shook it. "Thank you for coming, and for putting up with, ah--things. Were you listening at the keyhole, by the way?"
"I heard a choking sound. I thought someone had been taken ill."
"Was that all you heard?"
"Yes."
Dumbledore surveyed him. The Mantle, soft and filmy, yielded without giving way. "Miss Trelawney was upset, you understand. I want to be able to assure her that our conversation remained private."
"Of course, sir. I understand."
"Good, then. Good." Looking preoccupied, Dumbledore turned toward the door.
"When may I expect to hear from you, sir?"
"Hear from--? Oh, I'm sorry, the professorship!" What else? Severus wondered, while Dumbledore stood for a moment with his head cocked. "Give me a week. I'll know my decision then. I'll owl you."
"Thank you, sir."
"You're quite welcome." The Headmaster held the door open, and with great effort Severus avoided giving him an odd look as he went out.