Severus Snape, Jack-of-all-trades - Part 2
Severus Snape may be a former Death Eater and despised by many, but he seems to have endless career opportunities. It's amazing just how many things that man can do! This is one wizard who doesn't need to fall back on potions or teaching for a living.
Thanks again to keladry_lupin for a theme so wonderful it inspired a sequel quiz!
This week's theme was chosen by biogrrl8877 who would probably make a great spy.
Have fun playing the quiz. Take your time. Just comment on the quiz post with your answers any time before the official answer post goes up on Monday and you could be this week's quiz winner! You could win a fabulous trip to the SSHG Quiz Vault to pick next week's quiz theme. Go on and play. You know you want to.
Match the quote to the story title:
Good as Gold by camillo1978
Tree of Life by machshefa
Jitters by lulabelle72
Questions Unasked by larilee
Taking a Chance by elfarren
The Thestral's Egg by absolute_tash
Chiaroscuro by tribunicianveto
The Hardship of Accounting by harrietvane
State Secrets by Elisabeth aka scribliz
Third Time's the Charm by ginny_weasley31
Meeting Frederick by keladry_lupin
To Touch The Spaces by bethbethbeth
1. The tea was in a large, brown pot, with milk and sugar in matching pots. It reminded her of the set her mother had when she was a little girl, though the cups were rather better quality than her parents' mugs. Snape arranged them neatly on the table, and placed the strainer across her cup, ready to pour.
“I don't suppose,” she said softly, “that you could join me.”
He looked at her, and in his distraction some tea splashed onto the tablecloth. “Erm, sorry?” he asked, mopping at the cloth with the napkin that Percy had left behind.
“No, nothing.” She looked down at the spreading stain as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
“I... I don't actually work here,” he said. “Well, I do. I'm the owner. More precisely the goblins at Gringotts are the owners, and they very generously allow me to work here six days a week for the pleasure of paying them a usurious amount of interest on the mortgage they gave me. I probably really own a chair leg, when you get down to it.”
“Oh,” she said.
Snape eyed her intently. “If you wouldn't be averse to my company, I could perhaps join you.”
2. If you could please forgive me for being concerned about my friend, we can try to conclude our business."
He eyed her up and down and appeared to make up his mind when he turned again to leave. She whispered pleadingly, "Please. Please, Mr. Salford."
Her almost outright begging did seem to please him. A cold smile on his lips, he turned back to the table and sat, one leg elegantly folded over the other (or as elegantly as a man of his size could manage-Hermione was impressed with the way he moved his bulk).
"The money, Granger." When she did not immediately move to hand it over, he tapped one manicured finger on the table. Reluctantly, she handed it over.
"This doesn't mean you're hired," she said testily. He ignored her as he opened the sack and counted the Galleons inside. Watching him, she wondered why she hadn't simply let him leave. She could've just told Rose that the man was, as expected, a swindler, and that would be that. And the man was right. Hermione had no doubts that she could, in fact, find any evidence needed to prove Brandon's guilt. Truthfully, she did not need Nero Salford at all.
But there was something strangely intriguing about a man with the only private investigation service in the known wizarding world; a man whose line of work was likely inherently... dangerous.
And he was Polyjuiced; she was positive of this. Who knew what he truly looked like without the disguise? Who knew his true identity?
Did she?
3. "Since the war ended, I have found various methods of supporting myself, Mrs. Weasley. I supply questionable potions for the ladies here in Diagon Alley. I break curses on occasion. I find people who are missing. I've even been known to provide protection for certain individuals who require such services. But what you're asking is in an entirely different league."
"You know how to handle yourself in a tight spot. That's why I came to you."
"Still, your case is very special. And special is not cheap. We need to discuss remuneration."
"My husband's death has put a strain on my finances, but I have enough liquidity to cover your expenses plus a modest retainer. And I am prepared to offer you considerably more."
She rises and steps toward me. I catch a whiff of her scent. Cold, almost sepulcher-like. Intoxicating. I am surprised when she places a hand over my heart. I manage to keep my voice steady.
"More?"
4. Unspeakable training was rigorous, more so than even his Potions mastery. He revelled in it, absorbing new disciplines with an eagerness he'd not felt since, well, ever. What a pleasure it was, he thought, to be free to learn without fear; for his achievements to serve no nefarious purpose, and to be given leave to leap into his studies with abandon. It took months for the reflexive flinch and glance over his shoulder to fade whenever a supervisor or colleague entered the room. Decades of vigilance softened ever so slightly as Severus settled into the first unequivocally scholarly setting he'd ever experienced.
His fellow Unspeakables were a varied lot: deeply involved in work that crossed disciplines, theoretical and practical; seeking out one another for scholarly discourse or assistance and the occasional shared meal. He knew some of them from his own schooling; others he'd taught. His reputation and natural reserve set him apart, as did the inescapable reality that some of them had pulled him from his old life and near-death.
He understood now, from his vantage point inside the department, that they had watched him for years, tracking the convoluted steps of his journey with instruments designed to monitor the ebb and flow of the hearts that held the soul of the wizarding world in their hands.
5. To call the tiny Ministry office in which Severus Snape currently spent nine hours each day, six days each week a broom cupboard would have been an insult to broom cupboards everywhere. The room certainly could not have seen a broom (or any other cleaning implement, magical or not) in living memory. The floor and the walls were covered with grime and grease and mould, and would surely have looked even worse than they did if there had been anything stronger to illuminate the room than the single dusty Muggle bulb that dangled from an old fixture set in the centre of the cracked ceiling.
The scarred and splintered desk which he'd been given took up half the floor space. Its left drawer was stuck fast with something Severus could only hope was wood glue and its right drawer was home to a family of venom-spitting tarantulas. The centre drawer was missing entirely. Severus' chair sat unevenly upon the floor and seemed in greater danger each day of collapsing into a pile of kindling. Even the few office supplies he had seemed to have found their way into the room by following signs (visible only to office supplies, no doubt) directing them to The Office In Which Old, Nearly-Useless Office Supplies Go To Die.
6. 'This is all I intend to say: I joined the order in nineteen-seventy-five,' he went on, 'though, as you might imagine, I was never a very active member. You will have had no idea, of course,' he added, pre-empting another of her questions. 'I liked to keep my private life private, especially from students.' He laughed softly, though it seemed the humour was pained. 'And here you are, my student again.'
'How did you end up here, in Wales?' Hermione asked.
'After the war, Owain requested that I come here so that I could teach people like you. I've been through a lot in my life,' he explained reflectively, 'joy and sorrow, mastery and slavery, travel and solitude. There is very little in poetry or song that I haven't experienced. I'm prepared to teach you how to find those emotions in your own, I must say rather limited, experience, although I don't expect you to absorb much.' His expression was baleful. 'Your talents have never lain in the ex tempore realm.'
'How many people have you taught?' She took brief pride in her lack of reaction to his taunt.
A mild flush coloured Snape's pale face. 'You're the first,' he admitted. 'But I haven't let my time go to waste. You won't find yourself ill-served.' He frowned, as if regretting what he had just said, and stood abruptly. 'We start early tomorrow. You should get some sleep.'
7. “So, you wanted to know how I ended up in Prague,” he began, inclining his head in Hermione’s direction to make sure she was listening. After she nodded he went on, saying, “It was not my intention, originally, to work for the Ministry, but it was they who approached me after Harry vanquished the Dark Lord.
“I was surprised, to say the least, when they found me trying to leave the country. Apparently Albus made provisions for me before his death, which the Ministry was gracious enough to uphold when all was said and done. He put a trace on my wand that high ranking members of the Auror Department were made aware of and used to find me after the war ended. Albus knew that if Harry won I would have no place to go since I was a ‘traitor’, but he had enough influence to guarantee my exoneration in all matters pertaining to his planned murder and my subsequent defection.
“Not having anywhere else to go, or any real plans aside from escaping with my life for that matter, I took up Mr. Blanchwood on his offer to become a secret member of the Auror task force. In exchange for secreting me out of Britain, I would have only to train elite members of the department for covert missions. My aptitude for Occlumency and Legilimency, as well as my knowledge of the Animagus transformation were all valuable assets to the Ministry. And so here I am, providing training for them in exchange for all the creature comforts this world has to offer.”
8. Space was at a premium at the Ministry. An already overcrowded Muggle London limited the physical space, and it had been magically enhanced and enlarged time and time again over the centuries. Annabella didn't feel the books were safe enough to be placed in the small storage room they claimed as a library, not until they had been thoroughly checked for hexes and catalogued.
"But if we had someone who could check for hexes…" Scrimgeour thought aloud.
Annabella snorted. "And have to waste time training them for the common and uncommon jinxes those wretched Death Eaters put on them? It'll take more time than it would just do it all ourselves, but I've no one to spare for it. If Alastor were still alive…" She sighed heavily.
Scrimgeour smiled and rubbed his hands together. "I might know of someone."
And so it was that Severus Snape became the Chief Cataloguer of the Ministry for Magic's Dark Artefacts Reference Library.
9. And so Severus Snape, one-time potions master and current international fugitive, had, with the assistance of Minerva and a truly disgusting and obscure potion, become Professor Parvenus Sees, Bursar of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. To be fair to the old bat, she hadn't lied. He was paid as well as a teacher can ever hope to be, housed and fed. He only saw the students at meal times, and the staff's reticence to discuss money with whomever they were trying to obtain it from had not diminished in his absence. They thoughtfully snuck into his office and left the appropriate paperwork on his desk while he was off doing things far more interesting than teaching.
His duties were limited to two things, really: approving expenditure within the terms of his delegation (which, according to Minerva, was 'anything costing less than replacing the castle') and providing a quarterly report to the board of governors. And there was the real problem. Fact: Hogwarts did not have enough gold left to both pay the staff and feed the students for more than the next month. Fact: The day after tomorrow, there was a meeting of the board of governors. While this would be his first such meeting, he found it highly likely that they would not look favourably on the financial state of affairs.
Unless.
A quick rummage through the various piles of paper on his desk produced a crumpled and tea stained memo, just one of several hundred that he had glanced over and quickly set aside in favour of infinitely more exciting pursuits, such as watching paint dry.
10. But watching him now, she was overcome with the more recent memory of his chic alter ego. Quite the transformation - it made her own disguise look amateurish by comparison.
Underneath her lingering embarrassment, Hermione realized, was sheer jealousy. Here she had been priding herself on a nicely done disguise. Trust Snape to go her one better, and to top it off with a dash of sheer nerve. She wondered if she possibly could have entered Madam Kerensa's disguised as a man. What she wouldn't give to learn exactly how Snape's appearance-altering charm was achieved! Or was it a more effective version of Polyjuice?
Not that Snape would share anytime soon. For one thing, he was an Unspeakable, and inscrutability went with the job. For another, the man was ridiculously difficult on principle.
Well, she could hardly blame him, what with barely surviving a close encounter with the Dark Lord's pet assassin ("entirely due to my own preparations and the timely arrival of a cadaver-gathering team, Granger," as Snape never tired of pointing out), not to mention an extended, acrimonious post-war inquiry.
Hermione had never been able to tell how Snape had felt about the result - an Order of Merlin Second Class and a more or less mandatory assignment to the Unspeakables. About the only emotion of his she could reliably read was his profound distaste at those rare moments she was granted access to his research (by direct order from the Minister, of course).
Still, for all his vitriol, he really could be the most stimulating conversationalist when he chose. Odd to think that nearly all of her most pleasant memories of the years spent at the Ministry involved bickering with Snape over something or other.
Thanks again to keladry_lupin for a theme so wonderful it inspired a sequel quiz!
This week's theme was chosen by biogrrl8877 who would probably make a great spy.
Have fun playing the quiz. Take your time. Just comment on the quiz post with your answers any time before the official answer post goes up on Monday and you could be this week's quiz winner! You could win a fabulous trip to the SSHG Quiz Vault to pick next week's quiz theme. Go on and play. You know you want to.
Match the quote to the story title:
Good as Gold by camillo1978
Tree of Life by machshefa
Jitters by lulabelle72
Questions Unasked by larilee
Taking a Chance by elfarren
The Thestral's Egg by absolute_tash
Chiaroscuro by tribunicianveto
The Hardship of Accounting by harrietvane
State Secrets by Elisabeth aka scribliz
Third Time's the Charm by ginny_weasley31
Meeting Frederick by keladry_lupin
To Touch The Spaces by bethbethbeth
1. The tea was in a large, brown pot, with milk and sugar in matching pots. It reminded her of the set her mother had when she was a little girl, though the cups were rather better quality than her parents' mugs. Snape arranged them neatly on the table, and placed the strainer across her cup, ready to pour.
“I don't suppose,” she said softly, “that you could join me.”
He looked at her, and in his distraction some tea splashed onto the tablecloth. “Erm, sorry?” he asked, mopping at the cloth with the napkin that Percy had left behind.
“No, nothing.” She looked down at the spreading stain as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
“I... I don't actually work here,” he said. “Well, I do. I'm the owner. More precisely the goblins at Gringotts are the owners, and they very generously allow me to work here six days a week for the pleasure of paying them a usurious amount of interest on the mortgage they gave me. I probably really own a chair leg, when you get down to it.”
“Oh,” she said.
Snape eyed her intently. “If you wouldn't be averse to my company, I could perhaps join you.”
2. If you could please forgive me for being concerned about my friend, we can try to conclude our business."
He eyed her up and down and appeared to make up his mind when he turned again to leave. She whispered pleadingly, "Please. Please, Mr. Salford."
Her almost outright begging did seem to please him. A cold smile on his lips, he turned back to the table and sat, one leg elegantly folded over the other (or as elegantly as a man of his size could manage-Hermione was impressed with the way he moved his bulk).
"The money, Granger." When she did not immediately move to hand it over, he tapped one manicured finger on the table. Reluctantly, she handed it over.
"This doesn't mean you're hired," she said testily. He ignored her as he opened the sack and counted the Galleons inside. Watching him, she wondered why she hadn't simply let him leave. She could've just told Rose that the man was, as expected, a swindler, and that would be that. And the man was right. Hermione had no doubts that she could, in fact, find any evidence needed to prove Brandon's guilt. Truthfully, she did not need Nero Salford at all.
But there was something strangely intriguing about a man with the only private investigation service in the known wizarding world; a man whose line of work was likely inherently... dangerous.
And he was Polyjuiced; she was positive of this. Who knew what he truly looked like without the disguise? Who knew his true identity?
Did she?
3. "Since the war ended, I have found various methods of supporting myself, Mrs. Weasley. I supply questionable potions for the ladies here in Diagon Alley. I break curses on occasion. I find people who are missing. I've even been known to provide protection for certain individuals who require such services. But what you're asking is in an entirely different league."
"You know how to handle yourself in a tight spot. That's why I came to you."
"Still, your case is very special. And special is not cheap. We need to discuss remuneration."
"My husband's death has put a strain on my finances, but I have enough liquidity to cover your expenses plus a modest retainer. And I am prepared to offer you considerably more."
She rises and steps toward me. I catch a whiff of her scent. Cold, almost sepulcher-like. Intoxicating. I am surprised when she places a hand over my heart. I manage to keep my voice steady.
"More?"
4. Unspeakable training was rigorous, more so than even his Potions mastery. He revelled in it, absorbing new disciplines with an eagerness he'd not felt since, well, ever. What a pleasure it was, he thought, to be free to learn without fear; for his achievements to serve no nefarious purpose, and to be given leave to leap into his studies with abandon. It took months for the reflexive flinch and glance over his shoulder to fade whenever a supervisor or colleague entered the room. Decades of vigilance softened ever so slightly as Severus settled into the first unequivocally scholarly setting he'd ever experienced.
His fellow Unspeakables were a varied lot: deeply involved in work that crossed disciplines, theoretical and practical; seeking out one another for scholarly discourse or assistance and the occasional shared meal. He knew some of them from his own schooling; others he'd taught. His reputation and natural reserve set him apart, as did the inescapable reality that some of them had pulled him from his old life and near-death.
He understood now, from his vantage point inside the department, that they had watched him for years, tracking the convoluted steps of his journey with instruments designed to monitor the ebb and flow of the hearts that held the soul of the wizarding world in their hands.
5. To call the tiny Ministry office in which Severus Snape currently spent nine hours each day, six days each week a broom cupboard would have been an insult to broom cupboards everywhere. The room certainly could not have seen a broom (or any other cleaning implement, magical or not) in living memory. The floor and the walls were covered with grime and grease and mould, and would surely have looked even worse than they did if there had been anything stronger to illuminate the room than the single dusty Muggle bulb that dangled from an old fixture set in the centre of the cracked ceiling.
The scarred and splintered desk which he'd been given took up half the floor space. Its left drawer was stuck fast with something Severus could only hope was wood glue and its right drawer was home to a family of venom-spitting tarantulas. The centre drawer was missing entirely. Severus' chair sat unevenly upon the floor and seemed in greater danger each day of collapsing into a pile of kindling. Even the few office supplies he had seemed to have found their way into the room by following signs (visible only to office supplies, no doubt) directing them to The Office In Which Old, Nearly-Useless Office Supplies Go To Die.
6. 'This is all I intend to say: I joined the order in nineteen-seventy-five,' he went on, 'though, as you might imagine, I was never a very active member. You will have had no idea, of course,' he added, pre-empting another of her questions. 'I liked to keep my private life private, especially from students.' He laughed softly, though it seemed the humour was pained. 'And here you are, my student again.'
'How did you end up here, in Wales?' Hermione asked.
'After the war, Owain requested that I come here so that I could teach people like you. I've been through a lot in my life,' he explained reflectively, 'joy and sorrow, mastery and slavery, travel and solitude. There is very little in poetry or song that I haven't experienced. I'm prepared to teach you how to find those emotions in your own, I must say rather limited, experience, although I don't expect you to absorb much.' His expression was baleful. 'Your talents have never lain in the ex tempore realm.'
'How many people have you taught?' She took brief pride in her lack of reaction to his taunt.
A mild flush coloured Snape's pale face. 'You're the first,' he admitted. 'But I haven't let my time go to waste. You won't find yourself ill-served.' He frowned, as if regretting what he had just said, and stood abruptly. 'We start early tomorrow. You should get some sleep.'
7. “So, you wanted to know how I ended up in Prague,” he began, inclining his head in Hermione’s direction to make sure she was listening. After she nodded he went on, saying, “It was not my intention, originally, to work for the Ministry, but it was they who approached me after Harry vanquished the Dark Lord.
“I was surprised, to say the least, when they found me trying to leave the country. Apparently Albus made provisions for me before his death, which the Ministry was gracious enough to uphold when all was said and done. He put a trace on my wand that high ranking members of the Auror Department were made aware of and used to find me after the war ended. Albus knew that if Harry won I would have no place to go since I was a ‘traitor’, but he had enough influence to guarantee my exoneration in all matters pertaining to his planned murder and my subsequent defection.
“Not having anywhere else to go, or any real plans aside from escaping with my life for that matter, I took up Mr. Blanchwood on his offer to become a secret member of the Auror task force. In exchange for secreting me out of Britain, I would have only to train elite members of the department for covert missions. My aptitude for Occlumency and Legilimency, as well as my knowledge of the Animagus transformation were all valuable assets to the Ministry. And so here I am, providing training for them in exchange for all the creature comforts this world has to offer.”
8. Space was at a premium at the Ministry. An already overcrowded Muggle London limited the physical space, and it had been magically enhanced and enlarged time and time again over the centuries. Annabella didn't feel the books were safe enough to be placed in the small storage room they claimed as a library, not until they had been thoroughly checked for hexes and catalogued.
"But if we had someone who could check for hexes…" Scrimgeour thought aloud.
Annabella snorted. "And have to waste time training them for the common and uncommon jinxes those wretched Death Eaters put on them? It'll take more time than it would just do it all ourselves, but I've no one to spare for it. If Alastor were still alive…" She sighed heavily.
Scrimgeour smiled and rubbed his hands together. "I might know of someone."
And so it was that Severus Snape became the Chief Cataloguer of the Ministry for Magic's Dark Artefacts Reference Library.
9. And so Severus Snape, one-time potions master and current international fugitive, had, with the assistance of Minerva and a truly disgusting and obscure potion, become Professor Parvenus Sees, Bursar of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. To be fair to the old bat, she hadn't lied. He was paid as well as a teacher can ever hope to be, housed and fed. He only saw the students at meal times, and the staff's reticence to discuss money with whomever they were trying to obtain it from had not diminished in his absence. They thoughtfully snuck into his office and left the appropriate paperwork on his desk while he was off doing things far more interesting than teaching.
His duties were limited to two things, really: approving expenditure within the terms of his delegation (which, according to Minerva, was 'anything costing less than replacing the castle') and providing a quarterly report to the board of governors. And there was the real problem. Fact: Hogwarts did not have enough gold left to both pay the staff and feed the students for more than the next month. Fact: The day after tomorrow, there was a meeting of the board of governors. While this would be his first such meeting, he found it highly likely that they would not look favourably on the financial state of affairs.
Unless.
A quick rummage through the various piles of paper on his desk produced a crumpled and tea stained memo, just one of several hundred that he had glanced over and quickly set aside in favour of infinitely more exciting pursuits, such as watching paint dry.
10. But watching him now, she was overcome with the more recent memory of his chic alter ego. Quite the transformation - it made her own disguise look amateurish by comparison.
Underneath her lingering embarrassment, Hermione realized, was sheer jealousy. Here she had been priding herself on a nicely done disguise. Trust Snape to go her one better, and to top it off with a dash of sheer nerve. She wondered if she possibly could have entered Madam Kerensa's disguised as a man. What she wouldn't give to learn exactly how Snape's appearance-altering charm was achieved! Or was it a more effective version of Polyjuice?
Not that Snape would share anytime soon. For one thing, he was an Unspeakable, and inscrutability went with the job. For another, the man was ridiculously difficult on principle.
Well, she could hardly blame him, what with barely surviving a close encounter with the Dark Lord's pet assassin ("entirely due to my own preparations and the timely arrival of a cadaver-gathering team, Granger," as Snape never tired of pointing out), not to mention an extended, acrimonious post-war inquiry.
Hermione had never been able to tell how Snape had felt about the result - an Order of Merlin Second Class and a more or less mandatory assignment to the Unspeakables. About the only emotion of his she could reliably read was his profound distaste at those rare moments she was granted access to his research (by direct order from the Minister, of course).
Still, for all his vitriol, he really could be the most stimulating conversationalist when he chose. Odd to think that nearly all of her most pleasant memories of the years spent at the Ministry involved bickering with Snape over something or other.