"And you're quite sure your students only know the sensible parts of the story, are you?" Filius asked in a let's-be-reasonable voice.

"There were some?" Minerva wondered aloud, dust-dry, as Severus's face fell.

It's 1985, and Hogwarts's most junior (permanent) faculty member may have slightly underestimated his influence on his admiring students. …No, seriously. It's, like, a problem.

Disclaimer: Profitless fanwork. Character opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the author. Or the intentions of the original author…

Warnings: approximately canon-typical levels of offscreen violence, academic and House politics.

Less serious warnings: Use of a word the '80s British didn't use much but did use (I checked!) and repeated possibly slightly improper use of a proofing phrase. Hogwarts faculty members may value efficiency but do not always, when it comes to getting down to business on a Sunday afternoon, practice it. Severus is deeply more than superficially weird. Especially for a Slytherin. And Has Notions. And also is a bit evil (duh). He may not be quite alone there.

Humor, spackle—oddly, not crack.

Title Notes

on AO3 I've now titled the series this is part of (also encompassing Clustersparkle and Inconceivable!) the Hogwarts' faculty mascot is a cobra. I am not entirely satisfied with this title, although it does more or less say what I mean, and am still open to suggestions.

The Boomerang Effect: an attempt at persuasion had the effect opposite from what was intended. Witness the response to Umbridge's attempts to create a Ministry playground out of Hogwarts.

The Cobra Effect: attempts to solve a problem made it worse, such as when the British Government tried to reduce the number of cobras in Delhi by offering a bounty for every dead cobra, thus giving birth to a cobra-breeding industry.

The Boomslang Effect: a Slytherin faced with a problem has heard of both these things.

"You have to put a stop to this!" Poppy demanded, storming into the staffroom with wisps of hair escaping her kerchief.

Once it had been made clear to a surprised Severus (by means of looming over him and tapping her foot very loudly) that she was talking to him, he put down his crossword on the stack of essays in front of him that wasn't whimpering and bleeding red ink. "No going ahead while I'm being yelled at," he announced, peering around at everyone suspiciously until they'd all put their own copies down.

Silvanus, hitting the hourglass with his wand to stop the sand falling, looked the most irritated by the interruption, and Filius the most as though he expected the new diversion to more than compensate. Bathsheba seemed to be of his mind, and Minerva to be withholding judgment. Septima complained, "That's not fair, you'll be finishing in your head the whole time."

"So will you," parried Severus haughtily, "and I'll be distracted."

"No one will be distracted!" Poppy shouted, glaring at him so hard that if their positions had been reversed, something would probably have been on fire. Or at least wished it was.

"Well-will-you-look-at-the-time," Silvanus said flatly, an eyebrow raised at her (not the one bisected by the Valcore-claw scar). "I'm sure I must have something that needs feeding."

"It's less than an hour since lunch," Severus pointed out, just as flatly, not so much protesting his desertion as highlighting its cowardice.

"I'm sure Hagrid's hatched something dreadful under his sofa since then."

"Oh, has Hagrid gotten a sofa?" Bathsheba asked, too quickly, and dragged a grateful Septima up with her to the door. "We'd better go have a look. He's so bad with upholstery, he'll have covered it in stoat fur from his sandwiches or the like."

"Ermines!" Severus craned around Poppy to shout reproachfully after them.

"…Ermines?" Filius had to ask, because it was clearly an accusation, not a correction. He could have waited, but Poppy was looking so distracted from her ire by her own confusion that it was probably safe enough.

"I was going to say 'weasels,'" Severus explained, "but it didn't seem very diplomatic. Ermines are considered to be more attractive, I believe; better fur. Or are we supposed to treat everyone exactly the same now? I can't keep up with all the schisming mini-waves of feminism and the unchecked feral pop socioeconomic psychopathology—"

"You mean psychology."

"I do not, I mean bloody self-indulgent self-destructive preachy lunacy anyone with a grain of common sense or headology wouldn't give two pins for unless it was to stick them in the authors. I can't keep up with all that and all the craft journals; I just know what Mam would have thumped me for."

"Speaking of which," Poppy said ominously, before ruining the effect by sagging into Silvanus's abandoned armchair.

"What did I do?" Severus asked plaintively, and then added a sharp, "Oi!"

Minerva pulled an innocent face for a moment, then waved a hand at him dismissively. "Don't be ridiculous, Severus, no one will be keeping track after this. And I should prefer not to correct essays if you two are going to have a set-to; it's distracting."

"Very sensible," Filius agreed gravely. "Much better to have a crossword in hand than an essay, if the dictaquill should suddenly write down 'bwahahahaha.'"

"It isn't funny," Poppy said, sounding so tired that he looked repentant.

"But I haven't done anything!" Severus insisted. Warning bells went off for everyone as he began to hunch into the defensive vulture they didn't see much of anymore, his hair starting to slide down in front of his face.

"No, dear," Poppy agreed, reaching over to pat his knee. He shifted, embarrassed, retreating even further behind his hair, and various hidden things about his person clinked. "But you've got to put a stop to it all the same."

Severus uncoiled instantly, glaring, to more glass noises. "Why me?" he demanded. "Why is it always my students?"

Minerva murmured, "Plus ça change…"

"No!" he declared, rounding on her sharply. Clink, clink, grind. "Those of my classmates who were out of control were out of control because they were not controlled! And they were not alone in that! My students know damn well they're for it if they start trouble, and they don't! We didn't win the cup last year over Quidditch, we won it because they stopped losing the points they win in class every five minutes!"

"Bloody right you didn't win it over Quidditch," Minerva agreed. If it hadn't been for the cliché factor, they would have considered her to be practically purring, and checked her teacup to see if it was pure cream.

"Our Beaters got nobbled!" Severus said defensively, but not in the worrying way. "Smythwycke had dragonpox, for Salazar's sake. We had to put in both reserves, and one of those was a second-year!"

"Nobbled?" Minerva repeated, arching an eyebrow dangerously. "You can hardly say that a player's been nobbled because they've fallen ill, Severus. Surely you're not accusing anyone of giving Smythwycke dragonpox? That would be a most serious—"

"Smythwycke fell ill," Severus agreed sweetly. "Pevensie just fell."

"Well, there you are."

"There was oil on the stairs!"

"Which brings us nicely," Poppy interjected swiftly, "to my point." She reconsidered. "Not nicely. She will be back with us next term, Severus?"

"Possibly," Severus said shortly. "Her family's considering Salem and Walkabout." He eventually filled the silence with, "They feel a foreign school might be safer for a Slytherin, but they do realize that even if she's not with the form she Sorted with, here she would have the House for air and armor, and that everyone would be looking out for her particularly now." He didn't exactly glare at Minerva, but his eyes had chilled.

"You have no cause to believe that wasn't an accident or an even more than usually irresponsible act of Peeves," Minerva said, stubborn but sobered.

"She would have been on the pitch in two days and it took place on the Astronomy tower stairs, where she was sure to be hurt if she fell and there are no portraits to tattle," Severus said, very quietly. "One of the best ways to discover what was intended is to look at what happened. Peeves? It's just possible, but the Baron would have gotten it out of him if the Headmaster couldn't, I really do think, and what sort of accident would have taken technomancy-grade lubricant up there, to be left where it spilled but leave no shards of glass or crystal? It won't do, Minerva. It won't stand. The girl broke her neck. Among other things. If it wasn't for the blood alarms, or if the Headmaster couldn't apparate on the grounds, she'd be dead. A muggle would be cut off from the use of her body for life after an injury like that. These things aren't whimsical little accidents, and they're not pranks, and behaving as if they are is obscene."

Filius floated over (it made more sense for him than jumping off and onto couches) to sit next to him and put a hand on his wrist. "It does you credit to feel it," he said sympathetically, "and more to try and stop it, but you mustn't take it so hard, Severus. These things happen, in Quidditch—no, close your mouth, you'll catch flies. We've had a quite safe stretch, these last few decades, but Quidditch has always been a rough sport, on and off the pitch. You played; you know."

Severus rubbed his eye in baleful reminiscence. "That was different," he argued. "That was personal."

"Par for the course when I was a boy," Filius told him. "I'm not one of those who says it was better when it was all carpe jugulum in dies, but didn't you know it was going to be like that, when you played?"

Severus's mouth thinned, and he looked down.

Filius pressed, "Don't you make sure they know what they're letting themselves in for?"

"I can't help it if some of them are crazy," Severus muttered, shoulders hunching again, as though the problem was that some of his students played ball in spite of him and he stood accused of being insufficiently discouraging.

"Oh, yes," Minerva drawled, "that's exactly why they play." His head jerked up to glare real shocked outrage at her callousness, not his usual annoyed snarlyface at all, but the knowing sympathy in her expression left him wrongfooted and baffled.

"What Minerva means is," Filius explained, grinning, "she wants to know whether they actually brought the House Cup to you last summer full of star-grapes and kumquats, on a white-gold platter studded with green diamonds and pearls and heaped high with chocolates and presented it to you on bended knee with, perhaps, trumpets."

"Talk sense," Severus instructed him witheringly.

"They mean the children know you care about them, dear," said Poppy, "and they want to bring home lion-skins for you."

"I meant they have a healthy and natural spirit of competition!" Minerva protested, looking at her askance and rather repelled. "I'm sure you didn't have to put it like that."

"You must admit it sounds more heroic than bringing home a feathered cape or a badger-skin," Severus suggested, in a better humor now he had something to bicker about that didn't involve the idea of anyone looking up to him. "Although badgers have much the worse tempers."

"And they fight for themselves instead of sending lionesses to do it for them," Filius said, with a gallant little bow in Minerva's direction.

"On that subject, how are those inventories coming?" Severus asked her brightly. "That's what you're working on, outside of the classwork, isn't it? And then, what would it be, parent bellyaching? Detention schedule review? New list of things to outlaw or ways to string students up by their thumbs from Filch? Sorting the I-know-they-really-wanted-you-for-Minister-please-send-me-advice mail from Fudge?"

"Now that," she said severely, "was out of line, my lad." It was, however accurate. But she was sure he'd only left out the budget to stop her thinking of using it to get back at him for whatever he was about to do next, because he also had a distinct air of carping the diem with a gleaming oculus for the jugulum.

She was going to work out how to head him off one of these days.

"The Headmaster," she went on, sternly, "has never taken any office he wasn't asked to take, and not all of those. We're very fortunate it's him in the ones he did take, and not half a dozen other witches and wizards I can think of who'd cut off their ears for those jobs."

"They do sound unstable," Severus was unable to resist agreeing, his mouth quirking. However, when he went on, it was with the slightly poisonous silky-sweetness which had, by his graduation, taught fear to several DADA teachers, swayed Horace to usually call on Lily Evans instead, and made several History classes almost lively. "But I do think that, whether or not one has condescended to accept a job, once accepted one should do it. Don't you?"

The natural answer to this was so clearly 'well, of course,' that everyone looked at him suspiciously.

Apart from Poppy, who sighed, and said, "Severus, I'm not blaming you, I only said it's up to you to stop it." She answered the that-didn't-follow stares, "I'm preemptively striking out against the preemptive strike."

"I don't think I ought to be pleased about this," Severus remarked thoughtfully, looking as proud as if he'd taught Poppy strategy himself. Which he very nearly had, although not on purpose. She'd simply had him tied down (never physically but sometimes magically) in her infirmary, arguing with his friends about who was going to exact vengeance, too often not to have picked up a few things. Mostly from his friends, as they failed to convince him the answer was 'us, while you have an alibi, you manebrained maniac,' while using very small words, enunciated clearly and loudly.

"Of course you should," she said briskly, "I'm saving you no end of time and a screaming row."

"Suppose I want a screaming row," he posited, not as though he especially did but as though it was an interesting hypothetical that ought to be tested.

By way of cutting straight to the logical conclusion of either a row with Minerva or arguing with him over the advisability of having one, Poppy briskly bopped him over the head with his crossword.

"Point taken," he allowed graciously.

"Thank you," she returned in kind. And meant it: if he'd wanted to push his point, he would have.

It was safe, though, to let Severus wander once you'd dropped the suggestion there was something he'd mucked up or ought to fix. He was much more cooperative if he snarkled all the knee-jerk defensiveness out of his system first and came back to the subject of his own accord than if you held his feet to the fire, and he never could leave an idea like that alone.

Thank you, Minerva mouthed at her fervently. Various people had told her, over the years, that they suspected she reminded Severus of his mother. Which she frankly did not appreciate, though she was a few years older. They might both have had black hair, but she did not consider herself to look anything like Eileen Prince, and was quite grateful not to have been cursed with eyebrows or a surly attitude like that.

If it was the case, though, she gathered that while Severus had probably been a loving son, in his way, and might or might not have been a good son by the lights of anyone whose business it was, he certainly had not been an obedient or quietly respectful one, nor thought it expected of him. And while she wasn't entirely sure where he'd been heading with all that (Merlin knew Minerva barely had a moment for anything but work, communal sanity breaks aside), she was sure she was grateful he hadn't been allowed to arrive. It seemed likely to have gotten noisy.

"If we're not blaming me," Severus asked Poppy reasonably, "why am I the one putting a stop to it?"

"What are we talking about?" Filius asked the room generally, frowning. "It's been quiet the last week or so, hasn't it?"

They looked at him with universal expressions of polite incredulity, and then Severus realized, "He wasn't at breakfast."

The witches chorused a brief duet of enlightened ohs and ahs.

"No, I was up late with a grant plea. One of my alumna trying to convince Barty Crouch," Filius said, the slight souring of his generally cheerful voice inserting an unspoken expletive before the patronym (Severus's arm spasmed a little and, rubbing his hand, he made a noise like he wanted to spit), "to reconsider that embargo on flying carpets. The Persian Magical Satrapy's made wonderful strides—"

"I thought we were talking about carpets, not seven-league boots," Severus feigned confusion with wide eyes.

"—when it comes to safety, and they've such potential when it comes to group and family travel," Filius ignored him tolerantly.

"Anyway, aren't they calling themselves the Empire of the Crescent this year?"

"Fertile Crescent, isn't it?" Minerva asked, frowning.

"Just Crescent, but it's Emirate, I think. I think it's supposed to suggest a moon and scimitar, too," Poppy said uncertainly.

"Does anyone else suddenly want a pain chocolat?" Filius pondered.

"No," Severus said, crinkling eyes a glaring mismatch with his very pained and disapproving mouth, "but I am suddenly curious whether the yes-everyone-caught-your-terrible-croissant-pun would boomerang were I to throw one at you."

Well practiced in ignoring boys being ridiculous, Poppy threw up a hand while Filius was explaining that yes, all right, but he really did want one now, and then coming to his senses and explaining it to an elf instead. "We should just call them Iran, like the Muggles."

"Only Whatever-they-are-today is rather bigger than just Iran and has even less to do with their local Muggles than we do," Severus pointed out. He had one of his looks that said he knew he was risking getting thumped with the crossword again and was refusing to care as he chanted, "If your heels are nimble and light, you may get there by candle-light."

"Floo candles don't work," Minerva groused. Like everyone else, she had no idea why he thought he was going to get thumped, and she wasn't going to ask. Besides, since they were all in the dark, it was probably just Slytherin conditioning against admitting he knew muggle poetry.

"Not if you just use one at a time," Severus drawled.

"No, they were in a circle—yes, Severus, at the recommended intervals. They still don't work."

"You weren't just sprinkling powder on the flames, were you?" Filius asked her, frowning, and looked enlightened by her yes. "Ah, well, that makes it tricky. You have to use quite a wasteful lot of powder if you're just using ordinary candles, but if you use wicks soaked in a potion …"

"If you want to call it that." Severus made a face. "'Potion' generally implies more complexity than 'make an infusion,' this century at least."

"I've never known anyone like you for complaining because something doesn't give you trouble," Minerva observed, her smile less than usually starched.

"That's usually because it's planning something," he said darkly, eyes squirrelling around the room, and let his lips quirk once they'd laughed.

"Go on, then," she encouraged. "How does one make Travelling Tea?"

He shrugged. "You just dissolve one part floo powder in ten parts cool distilled water and leave the wicks to soak under moonlight in a bowl of hazel wood. Open moonlight, mind; if there's enough cloud cover to interfere, do it another night. And, if possible, make sure the candles are raw beeswax and the wicks pure and undyed linen. To remove the risk of interference by additives. Silk's better if you care to spend on it, and you can use cotton if you don't mind a rough ride. Fiber a mammal grew is, er, not advised. No blends."

"Why hazel?"

"Well, ruled by Mercury, so…" he shrugged.

"Ah! For travel, of course, but then why is the moon important?"

Severus would come back to problems set to him, but Filius was distractible. Poppy therefore said, with just a tinge of scold in her tone, "Because people sleep under it, Filius, and then they don't miss Sunday breakfast."

"Note to self," Severus said sourly. "Do not sleep under the moon: miss breakfast."

"Seconded," Minerva agreed, equally sourly.

"Gracious, what happened?" Filius blinked.

"Food fight," Minerva told him, pinching the bridge of her thin nose in headachy memory.

"Flying platters," Severus elaborated glumly. "Goblets everywhere. Often not emptied first. I don't know why we have to use bloody golden flatware," he complained, rubbing his shoulder. "Sodding heavy. And Gryff-centric," he added as an afterthought.

"Oh, don't start, no one got you in the unmentionables," Minerva groused, not rubbing her chest but shifting a bit as though she wanted to.

"No, they always go for the nose," he sighed. And grinned. "Stupid, really. It's not as if anyone with two neurons to rub together couldn't imagine I know they're going to. Even if I didn't own a mirror, there is such a thing as learning from history. And painting targets on the armored points, and armoring the natural targets with shields most aggressive…"

"Do you own a mirror?" Minerva asked, diverted and unable to entirely keep a mischievous smile off her mouth.

"Of course I do," Severus blinked at her. "Talking by floo's a pain in the knees."

They all shot him pained looks or groans, because a) this was the sort of self-depreciating nonsense they were trying to train him out of, b) he was clever enough to use a cushion or cushioning charm if he needed one, and c) he was far too young a wizard to be talking about pains in the anything.

"What?" he demanded. "You get soot everywhere. It shows up worse on black than on anything, what with being greenish and sparkly, and the magical residue makes it hard to clean by wand, and then the elves give me sad looks. Have you looked at them when they give you the sad looks? Bit worrying! They have eyes the size of snitches; I keep thinking they're going to fall out and I'll have to do something about it. Preferably before they land on the floor and scratch up their corneas. Always wondered how the Fates managed, squeezing theirs in and out of the orbital surfaces and careless heroes juggling them about, probably in sandy gauntlets, certainly not sanitized properly since the last monster."

"Ah," Minerva uttered dryly, and turned to Poppy. "I didn't think anyone had been badly hurt, though."

"Not badly," she conceded, "but it wasn't just bumps and bruises, you do realize. Those flying platters and the silverware—"

"Goldware."

"Severus."

"—left some nasty cuts. I had to regrow one of Mr. Leacock's ears back together, and there were some broken bones and gashes from falls and landing on things with corners. Not to mention, you are aware there were hexes and jinxes flying all over the place?"

"Yes," Severus and Minerva chorused, flat and dire. "Oh, yes," Minerva added, wincing. "Five minutes is a long time, with wands out. We could have shut it down in thirty seconds, if it hadn't been for Peeves."

"So very, very aware," Severus agreed, clutching dismally at his coffee. "I thought I even heard a few curses in the mix, although I pray none of them were that stupid."

"Pray harder," Poppy told him. "Or better yet, as I was saying, do something about it. It wasn't just jelly-fingers and pepper breath, either, there was an ear-shriveller and a flagrante and a conjunctivitis—and one I thought was one of yours, till I was able to mend the cut without calling you or Filius in for an incantation."

Severus went white. He started, so choked he sounded as if he had sand in his throat, "I have obliviated every surviving—"

"I was able to mend it," she repeated, slowly and clearly. "But it wasn't the only one I didn't recognize, Severus. It looked to me," she went on, looking between the two of them, "as if the majority of the Slytherins attempted to exercise some restraint towards the beginning; they'd taken on more mess and more minor damage. Probably more damage overall, counting by quantity."

Minerva sighed, and said, "Right," grimly. Poppy was satisfied with the promise of her disgusted and purposeful look. Unfortunately, not everyone was looking, or would have been equally satisfied, she knew, even if they had been.

"You're telling me they've been getting creative," Severus preempted Poppy, more grimly yet. She supposed it made him feel marginally more in control.

"All surprised parties," Filius droned, nudging Severus's arm with a sympathetic shoulder, "hands up."

Severus shot him suspicious knife-eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well," he drew out, smiling with kind eyes, "Slytherin is fond of its traditions and its stories about itself, isn't it."

"So?" Severus demanded, more suspicious yet.

"I imagine you know, or think you know, all sorts of things about what Bellatrix Black-as-was got up to at school, for example."

"Well, she was our lead prefect my first year," Severus admitted cautiously, eying him. "One tries to find things out about Authority. Especially Reputedly Unstable Authority With A Temper Who Comes Across Sweet As Sugar Quills. And she was something of a House legend. You say 'for example,' but I don't know of anyone else who got whispered about like that." He thought for a moment, and repeated, with emphasis, "Not like that."

"Hmm," Filius hummed, summoning his tea from across the room, with a little smile that looked liable to give Severus an aneurism from sheer mistrust. "House legend, yes, that sums it up nicely. I wonder, Severus, if you can think of any authority figures with a temper that, if your Slytherins researched them with, say, their parents and cousins, would turn out to have, oh… fought openly with Gryffindors at every apparent opportunity with no apparent regard for the numbers, odds, or audience, or hung irritating first-years from the ceiling like cocooned caterpillars?"

Severus stared at him, and eventually sputtered at his growing grin, "That—that was prefect-approved! And only for mass disobedience!"

"Or invented curses to shut people up, and turn them upside down while they're going for their wands, and knock them on their bottoms with their own toenails?" Poppy put in, also grinning.

"Those are hexes and jinxes!" Severus protested. "And the levicorpus was an emergency necessity-is-the-mother invention to fish Lockhart out of the lake! The way the dimwit was thrashing around, he was going to have drowned himself sucking in water to scream with before the squid could help him out. The upside-down bit's just wandwork, I ironed that out later when I was finished with the stopping the idiot from the drowning, which I think you'll agree was a sufficiently pressing circumstance to excuse the first draft being a little rough around the edges!"

"Mmm, yes, stopping him from drowning after you pushed him through the window into it in the first place, I heard," Minerva commented idly, pouring some cream into her tea. "With green lightning."

"He kissed me! On my FACE!" He pointed with a hand gone stiff and clawed with outrage at his cheek, which was a furious, humiliated red.

"As opposed to?" Minerva asked, fascinated.

"Not on my person at all!"

Then the wrath broke apart on a rock of helpless proto-laughter, and he added, sounding barely a step away from collapsing into (hysterical) giggles, "Please understand: he had, just previously, said—I cannot, with alcoholic or obliviational help, forget this—that I was a whiz-bang top-hole smartypants every day (please do not ask me which hole) and thank-me for dear Christ you do not want to know what I was helping the idiot with, and if I wanted he could find me the very best shampoo and skin crème—he pronounced it with the accent grave, really he did, as for pastry—but I couldn't take it out in trade because he had a boyfriend. As if his wretched boyfriend hadn't paid me to help and not kill him in the first place. Explicitly for the betterment of their—do you know what? I'm going to stop talking now, because honestly, you don't want to know. I didn't want to know. I still don't want to know!"

"But then you chucked him out a window?" Filius pointed out, bits of his face twitching as he tried to keep the whole of it straight.

"Tolerating personal contact from hairball-brained mental cases who use cologne for mouthwash was decidedly not part of the bargain. And I didn't kill him."

"Ah. So if you hadn't invented the spell, you would have had to give back the money?"

"Exactly!" Severus pointed at him victoriously, and also rather manically.

"And you're quite sure Slytherin knows only the sensible parts of the story, are you?" Filius asked in a reasonable voice.

"There were some?" Minerva asked Poppy, sotto voice, as Severus's face fell like Hagrid after his third barrel of ale. Louder, she mentioned, "And then there was the time someone who shall remain nameless set the Gryffindor table on fire…"

"Oh, that is not fair!" Severus scowled indignantly. "You're making it sound as if I did that on purpose. I don't even know I did do it, you all just say I did."

"You… don't know you did it," she echoed, staring at him in flat disbelief.

"I was very upset," he explained, shrugging. "I saw first-years spitting out their teeth from petrified candy apples and bats coming out their noses, and they were scared, and then I was stabbing Lockhart with a fork because he was enthusiastically threatening—er, offering to try to put the fire out himself and anything could have happened, that's all I know." He paused, but not because of their incredulous looks. "No, wait, I tell a lie, he didn't need stabbing that time. Our table was all over ice; I just had to trap his wand hand in it."

Poppy patted his knee again, and pointed out, "You're not helping your case, dear." Severus sagged.

"I heard a rumor you invented an area-silencing charm that works in the dormitories, too," Filius commented. "Always meant to ask you about that."

Severus blushed. Not flushed; this one was very clearly a blush. No one had ever seen him do that before. "Er, no," he muttered. "Not a silencing charm… anyway, I have a Talk with all their relatives, and there are other precautions running; none of them can cast that one, believe me."

"Would you like to lay odds they don't know you did it, though?" Minerva asked, amused.

"And aren't doing their best to reproduce it?" Filius tacked on brightly. "My money's on Aster Benvolion."

"I would have said Tiberius Moriarty," darkly opined Minerva. "Motivated, you know."

Severus silently buried his face in his hands. Then he reconsidered and, moving his face to the table, wrapped his arms around his ears. In a slightly muffled voice, he announced, "I shall be remaining just here for the foreseeable future. Kindly direct all enquiries to my office."

"What do you mean, motivated?" Poppy asked Minerva, worried she was about to get More Work.

"He's fifteen."

"That'd do it."

"I think I was fifteen," Severus dolefully informed the table.

"And motivated?" Filius winked.

"Look," Severus sat up, miffed and evidently done with blushing, "one of my roommates had a snore you could saw wood with, all right, and one of those thick gulping voices that sounds like it's full of bubotuber pus, once it broke, and he did not seem to notice that he was courting swift death by pureblood aesthete every time he went to sleep or brought a girl back or, er, shook hands with himself. And if anyone had died in our year, everyone would have blamed me. Yes, I was motivated."

Minerva hummed skeptical 'agreement.'

"I hate everybody," Severus informed the chandelier.

"Only because you understand my point now, though, am I right?" Poppy prodded him, not unsympathetically.

"Not only…"

"Severus…"

He sighed, shoulderblades sticking out like a moulting crow. "I suppose."

"Good, because I could go on, you know."

"All afternoon, if necessary," added Filius cheerfully. "I've got a little list."

"And you'll none of you be missed," Severus growled. Filius pulled a mildly disappointed face over that having come out in his speaking voice, but took it philosophically. He never had managed to get the student Severus onstage, even with (empty) threats of drumming him out of Music Club. Sighing again, "Fine. What exactly is it you want me to do?"

"Make them stop," Minerva suggested.

"You first," he snapped.

"And then bicorned pegasi with rainbow wings will descend from the moon on bridges of sparkling fairy dust and convince Binns to re-work his lesson plans," Filius cooed, batting his eyes ridiculously, before Minerva could do more than take a breath to start snapping back with.

"…That's disgusting," Severus said after a moment, clearly struggling not to smile. "I mean, I don't like fairies any more than anyone else, but making walkways of their ground-up wings seems a bit much. I mean, you'd have to kill or cripple billions, considering the distance from the moon, maybe trillions; they don't shed them nearly quickly enough for a natural gathering."

"Then if we're agreed that no one's asking for the utterly out-of-the-question-impossible?" Filius looked at Poppy expectantly.

"If you could just get them to stop making up attack spells," she nearly begged. "When there was only one feud running in one form, I'll admit it was an interesting challenge, other considerations aside. But it's endemic now, and I just don't have the time to puzzle out countercurses every day. People do get sick and have accidents and play quidditch and muck up their assignments, too, after all."

"But I want them thinking things out and experimenting," he protested, and appealed to Filius. "Don't you?"

"Severus, how many of your spells were designed as weapons?" the Charms professor asked patiently.

Severus had to think about that one. Finally he said, "The green lightning, I suppose, but that wasn't so much designed as one of those aargh spells. And I've used it for post-CPR defibrillation."

"I beg your pardon? One of those which?" Minerva asked, cup of tea halfway to her lips.

"You know," he waved a hand vaguely, "they just sort of come. When you're full of aargh."

"I can't say that I do," she informed him, eyebrows up and hiding her mouth behind the cup. "Are you telling me the cutting spell wasn't a weapon?"

"Of course not," he scoffed. "Knives are tools. Of course they can be used as weapons, and one can, admittedly, fixate in bad moments, what with the potential for detail work, but look." He took an apple from the fruit bowl on the sideboard and set it on his saucer, leaving his coffee cup hovering in the air and seeming not to notice the way everyone had choked on detail work.

"Sectumsempra," he cast, and peeled the apple. He displayed the peel: the inside was as red as the shiny outer skin, no fruity flesh clinging to it. "Sectumsempra," he cast again, and Filius began to look interested as he noticed that the wandwork was different. The apple divided neatly in half, although he had to pull the two halves apart.

He cast Minerva a mischievous, challenging look and cast the spell again, clearly slashing the line of it over not only the apple but his hand. The witches gasped, but when he moved his wand hand away, not only was his other hand unhurt, but the apple was unsliced. Only the seeds had been laid open. He told them, "It's not that it can't kill someone, if you do the wand motion for skin-and-veins, but it was meant for a safety blade. Even the skin-and-veins combination was meant for cutting leather and so on; you can't get through large areas of skin without hitting capillaries."

"Why make it so hard to heal, then?" Poppy charged him with a skeptical frown.

"The intention of the incantation was 'always cuts,'" Severus answered, looking a little embarrassed. "I started developing it when I got my hands on a length of dragonhide and didn't want to queer all my knives. And," he shifted shiftily, "er, one enjoys bad puns at fourteen and also alliteration, especially if it evokes one's House—"

"Yes, we've all noticed the way that ended when you were fourteen," Minerva noted innocently.

Severus shot her the stink eye. "And in brief—"

"Too late. It was always too late when he wrote it into his essays, too," she told Poppy, who tried to look, if not absent from the room or uninvolved, then at least as much like Switzerland as possible.

"And in brief," Severus repeated, glaring, "that translation of 'always cuts' also means 'separates forever.' Additionally, muggles have a brand of knives called Staysharps. So: will forever make its cut every time, was what I meant. Only, it's only the Dark Arts that care what you mean, and only some of them." He spread his hands in a slightly sullen there-you-have-it gesture.

"'Separates' forever?" skeptically pressed Minerva, who also did the Latin Sunday Crossword race, when she had time.

"Separates forever," Severus repeated firmly, in an I Am About To Storm Out Or Start Snarling At My Seniors To Sod Off tone.

"The toenails one?" Filius asked eagerly, not just to change the subject but because, well, charmsmithing.

"Someone had hexed mine off," Severus explained, settling with a few suspicious, tail-end-of-sulky eye-flicks towards Minerva that faded as he warmed to his subject. "Hurt like blazes, and I'd heard an old wives' tale they only regrow naturally once. It was another Slytherin and I hadn't worked out how to dodge questions yet, so I couldn't go to the Infirmary about it. United front and all. They only grow to absurd lengths if you put power and intent behind it."

"…Was there a lot of that?" Poppy asked after a moment, disturbed.

"Not for long," he purred, steepling his fingers smugly.

"What about that curse that switches a person's hands and feet," Minerva challenged him sternly.

"That's not a designer hex," Severus told her, eyebrow raised, "it's just a switching spell. You taught it to me yourself. In class."

"It's not meant to work on bits of people!"

"It does, though, if you know enough about anatomy."

"You are a very disturbing young man," she informed him.

"Water hovers in vaporous formations between the earth and ozone layer," he informed her.

"What about the one that covers people in bees," she accused. "For weeks, if it's not removed, as I recall!"

"It doesn't 'cover people in bees,'" he said patiently, "it powerfully attracts the bees of a previously-primed hive to a target. Honey and mead are the bases for hundreds of simple potions, most of which can even be legally sold to muggles, but if they're to work it's vital to use honey made from the right sorts of pollen. Pure strains. Not to mention that honey made from different sorts of flowers tastes different and so makes different flavors of mead as well. I make good money off that spell in the summers. It bought all my set books after third year."

"You keep bees at home?" Filius asked. "I didn't know that."

"Certainly not," Severus shuddered. "I'd like to like the idea, but hive minds with toxic stingers and expendable drones, no thank you, had quite enough of that. Besides, there's no place for them at the house. No, I sell the service to various beekeepers, and then I get a discount on the honey and sell the mead and potions."

"No flies on you," Minerva said dryly.

"The first cleverboots to make a spider joke gets coffee up their nose," Severus hurried to forestall everyone.

"Or a Scottish misers joke," Minerva agreed, on consideration.

"Don't be waspish," Filius urged piously, terribly pleased with himself. "It's too mean." Everyone groaned.

"My point is it's a waste of time directing mental energy towards inventing weapons," Severus said, still giving the unabashed Filius a pained you are tapdancing right on the line, Mister look. "Practically any tool can be used to incapacitate or misused to do harm; why bother?"

"…You sounded moderately less disturbing right until then," Minerva noted.

He shrugged. "It's wasteful making something that can only be used to one purpose, that's all I'm saying, when practically everything that isn't meant to harm has at least two uses."

Filius patted his elbow and advised, "Stop digging."

"But I haven't made her eye twitch yet," Severus pointed out reasonably. "And she was going to keep on with the crossword after the rest of us had implicitly agreed to stop." Everyone stared at him, and he gave them one of his deranged alligator grins and toasted them with his coffee. "Q.E.D: now all present understand the principle, while punishment commensurate to the offense has been dispensed. Up efficiency."

"You're just trying to catch up on five-year-old detentions," Minerva accused, crossing her arms. They could very nearly see her shadow's tail lashing.

He raised an eyebrow at her and didn't bother to point out that he'd graduated seven years ago, or that the percentage of his school troubles that had involved his teachers had dropped off sharply well before that. "How do you do it, Holmes?"

"Well, I can see you'll get no use from him while the Head of my House is here," she snapped at the other two, and banished her teacup. "I'll be in Pomona's office if I'm not in mine."

"Was that necessary?" Poppy chided when she'd gone. Then she wished she hadn't, because Severus turned his I Am About To Be Blunt And You Have Only Yourself To Blame look on her.

He said, meeting her gaze calm and clear-eyed, "Yes. She was spot on. You're both giving her and her students a pass, at least in front of me, for what they do to mine regularly. And all right, yes, she's even-handed post-incident but she doesn't even try to master them, which is just the same as encouragement as they're concerned: when it comes to pushing against the law and when it comes to cruelty and intolerance, the silence of authority is consent."

He took a breath and let it out slowly, but clearly wasn't done. "You've let her save face in front of me today—which you all usually do, and I understand that seniority and having sat her classes means I'm not going to hear whatever anyone says to her about it, but nothing changes—but you've been most imbalanced in your overt blaming today, so as to make an alliance with her in aid of your demand that I… in fact, I still don't understand precisely what you want me to do. The clemency may be temporary and/or in exchange for the aid, but regardless, I resent it. And only a hundredth of the resentment is on my own behalf."

Though his face didn't change, his voice hardened. "I concede your argument about my ultimate responsibility and won't ignore the matter, but you shouldn't have involved her, or even allowed her to witness the request. It was clumsy and unkind, a bad use of power and an abuse of your seniority." He took another slow breath and seemed to thaw, looking at her curiously. "Did you realize?"

"No!" Poppy exclaimed, shocked and upset. "Severus, I'm sorry, we didn't think you were—"

"I did," Filius corrected placidly, coring Severus's peeled apple with a tap of his wand and picking half up to eat.

"What the hell was that about, then?" Severus demanded, but he still looked more curious than angry.

"You're head of Slytherin. You may be supposed able to cope with a little boardroom maneuvering and friendly teasing, even from former class-masters, now you're well," Filius said, gesturing peacefully with his naked apple half. "And you weren't well, the first few years; you're only just getting, if I may use the expression for a serpent, your feet under you. It would be remiss of me to deprive you of a naturally-occurring opportunity to work on your micropolitics; Horace said that isn't your strong point. Besides, I missed the food fight," he added, aggrieved.

Severus rolled his eyes at the complaint, despite hearing perfectly well the unspoken layer of I wanted to see how you'd jump, young grasshopper with regrettable tattoo. He considered the rest of it, noted, "Granted, but in that area I think I explain better than I perform," and took a bite from the other half of the apple.

"Q.E.D," Filius chuckled.

"That'll do, then," Severus decided clinically. "For the students' purposes, at least. What did you want me to do, then, Poppy, exactly?"

She was looking between them with a wizards from the cool-colored Houses/men-generally are insane expression, and shook her head expressively in case they'd missed this opinion. "I don't know, exactly," she said. "I thought you'd know best what would work with your students." Now you're awake enough to get to know them rather than arching over them collectively and hissing like a rabid, overprotective vixen, she didn't add.

"You needn't flatter, I realize you didn't corner and pressure me from malice-and-callous," he told her, irritated.

"Just because I didn't mean to hurt you and I want something from you doesn't mean I'd stoop to soft soap, you juvenile curmudgeon," she said tartly. "It is your responsibility, and most of it still would be even if it were only a matter of being your job."

"Oh, all right, then," he said, happier, ignoring the way Filius was snickering into his apple. "So: to dissuade my students from using spells in hallway brawls that you can't be expected to know the cures for, do I have it?"

"That's right. Not that I'd complain if you could stop the brawls themselves…"

"Hm." He tapped his mouth with a knuckle, thoughtfully, and eventually said, "No, there is absolutely no method of tackling this head-on which would work in any way whatsoever and leave me still with real control of the House. Ergo, there's nothing I can do here that you're going to like."

"You can't do it?" she asked, deeply disappointed but somehow unsurprised, and resigned herself to getting no sleep at all for the rest of her life.

"Of course I can do it," Severus said calmly, and sipped his coffee. He clarified, "Just not in any way you'll approve. Consider yourself warned. Do you want me to proceed?"

"What are you going to do?" she demanded, alarmed.

"For pity's sake, I don't know! I've had approximately four and a half seconds to think about it since having the problem defined. I have the beginnings of a few ideas. They all want refining and I haven't decided what direction will be best to take. You'll hate everything, and whatever I do might take some time. Do you want me to proceed?"

Well, Poppy thought, he regularly said he hated everyone, which he clearly didn't. Besides, Filius, who seemed to understand him better than she did now he was out of that horrible fugue state, looked entertained, not alarmed. She said, "Yes. I do."

"Sucker," Severus noted, lips quirking. "I can pensieve that for evidence now, you realize." He steepled his fingers again, then laced them behind his head and leaned back, pursing his mouth, the humor falling away as he thought. "Let's see… it's all got to be tacit, but easily identifiable as a message from me. Have to let them know I'm not hypocrite enough to try to stop them entirely, just laying down some unspoken rules and limits; Slytherin understands there are things that are Done and Not Done… and provide positive incentives; if they're not bright enough to realize there will be negative ones they'll need the lesson… make sure to underline the Marquis of Queensbury's being imposed for a reason that's on their side, and make it tempting, and make them laugh a bit, only not too clever because they've all got to take the hint…"

Poppy looked between him and the deeply interested Filius, not sure whether to be worried or not. When Severus nodded abruptly and stood up, she asked, "Where are you going?"

"Library," he said, banishing his cup and plate. "I need a thesaurus and the really good Greco-Roman dictionary."

"May I come with?" Filius asked, eyes gleaming.

"I think not," Severus judged cheerfully. "You might be obliged to disapprove."

It was barely two weeks into the next term before Minerva chafed her way through the General Faculty How's The Term Starting Off Meeting's Old Business and, the minute New Business was invited, slammed a book down on the table. "I confiscated this," she gritted, "from a first-year Hufflepuff. He told me he'd bought it in Flourish & Blotts."

Albus picked up the book and examined the colorful, glossy cover. "Curses and Countercurses," he read out in his mild voice. "Foil your Foes with the Very Latest in Disarming Spells, Revenge Hexes, and Much, Much, More! By Professor Vindictus Viridian."

There was a brief pause until everyone had remembered viridian was green and joined him in looking at Severus. Not everyone looked as incredulous as Minerva was furious, but no one quite matched Albus's expression of quizzical curiosity with the judgment reserved, either.

Severus, by the time Albus had finished speaking, had leaned back to rest his neck on laced fingers and crossed his ankles with his boots on the table. Which was not at all the thing. His face was very bland, but to those of them who'd had him in classes since he was eleven (not thirteen), it was evident that he was desperately trying not to laugh.

Aiming his face in Poppy's general direction, his deep voice trembling almost inaudibly and his eyes fixed on a corner of the ceiling as though it was fascinating, he mused, "I thought about putting the hexbreaking spells in the back for the ones where a finite won't do it, but then I thought if they muck those up it'd make extra work for you, which of course is the opposite of the idea. I've got your copy of the Parents' and Teachers' Companion in my rooms; I'll bring it by the Infirmary tomorrow, if you like, or I can pass it over at dinner if you'd rather not wait."

Her jaw dropped. "You—! This is what you…!"

"Mm," he agreed dreamily, still looking at the ceiling. "Genies, monkeys' paws, and Slytherins: it's so important to be careful what you ask for, I always think…"

Notes: Regarding

—the book title: Harry saw the 1991 edition. Being (or at least looking) markedly different every year/edition is a marketing ploy. Lucius is very proud.

—sectumsempra: as has been noted by others, the most facepalmy translation is 'Sever Forever.'

—little lists: see The Mikado, by Gilbert & Sullivan. I mean, go see it, if you can. Because (snrk), and also music. Don't worry, you don't really need to know ancient Japanese culture to get the jokes; it's primarily a satire of… where the Dursleys are coming from, actually, if not quite the same people they're a satire of.

—candle-light: How many miles to Babylon is a nursery rhyme with which readers of Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones, Lewis Carroll, and many, many others may be familiar.

—pop psych: Personally, I've found good insights there, you just have to be selective and critical and remember that peer review has been sacrificed for a prose style that does not make everyone's eyes cross. Did you know Monty Python's John Cleese has, with a real doc, co-authored a couple? Smott guy. Thinks like a communication expert. For some strange reason.

—Minerva and Severus and the latin crossword: This idea, to the best of my knowledge, originated in Excessive(ly)perky's The Birthday Present. Thanks to hwyla for reminding me! There's so much good stuff in there I occasionally forget where an idea comes from and think it's just, you know, generalized fanon.

—muffliato: Severus was sixteen, not fifteen, when he perfected it, at least in my Subjectiverse, but he was fifteen for most of the school year he was working on it in. Over half, anyway.

No, I can't imagine that 'verse's Rosier actually killing Avery, either. But I imagine the tragic, stiff-upper-lip pathos, generalized aura of tight-throated homicidal despair, and prospect of Black(-blooded) screeching looming on the horizon were intolerable—and scary, for someone who'd grown up in Spinner's End.

As for related apparent discrepancies with that 'verse… Severus has no problem with lying by omission. Especially when it concerns things that aren't anyone's damned business.