A Dueling Club?" Minerva said with deep and weary misgiving. "Albus, you can't be serious."
It was one of Minerva's stock phrases that she always uttered regardless of the fact that she must have known it would never do any good. Even Severus occasionally found himself saying it. He wasn't sure whether it was a habit he'd picked up from her or the force of sheer, simple frustration, as when one asked the universe, "Why me?"
"Gilderoy thought it would be a good idea, in these dark times, to start one, and I thought him right on point," Dumbledore said, smiling in that daft way that made dafter people think he was just a daft old man. "The students should know how to defend themselves, don't you think?"
"The students should feel they know how to defend themselves, you mean," Minerva said tartly. "I highly doubt Slytherin's monster will observe the rules of engagement."
Severus agreed with her, but he didn't say so. He and Minerva never agreed with each other aloud. Of course, they'd made such a habit of keeping silent when the other said what they agreed with that their silence was now tantamount to agreement anyway. Perhaps he should say something snide . . . but that would mean approving of a scheme of Lockhart's, and Severus would award a million points to Gryffindor first.
"He'll need some help, of course," said Dumbledore, twinkling in a way that boded ill for someone's dignity.
Severus groaned internally. If dignity was at stake, it would always be his.
"Severus."
Bloody fucking—
Dumbledore gazed at him beatifically. "You wouldn't mind helping Gilderoy with a small demonstration, would you? There's only time for one meeting before the holidays, I think—"
Minerva was giving Severus a look that was half commiseration, half indecent amusement as his expense.
Severus opened his mouth to say, with utmost respect, Bugger Off You Barmy Old Codger, but his Inner Slytherin reminded him with a gentle cough that he was being handed an opportunity to openly curse Gildeory Lockhart in front of witnesses. Without repercussions. All in the name of an educational demonstration.
He barely managed not to smile.
"Of course," he said blandly. Minerva blinked. Dumbledore beamed.
"Excellent!" he said. "Most excellent. I am sure the students will enjoy themselves immensely, and that is what we all could use, I'm sure."
A stage had been set up in the Great Hall in place of the student tables. It was a garish gold and ringed by a sea of excited, chattering hellspawn. Even before Severus saw it, he was already regretting that he'd consented to this farrago of nonsense. Only the prospect of injuring Lockhart in a few minutes was keeping him from doing it right now.
"Excellent!" Lockhart rubbed his hands together as he looked out at his shrill admirers. "Truly excellent turnout! Couldn't wait to see how an old pro does it, eh, Snape old man?"
Severus just stared at him, to no visible effect. Another thing that enraged him about Lockhart was how it was truly impossible to tell whether he changed the subject because he was intimidated or because he simply wasn't hearing any praise of himself.
"Well, let's get to it!" he said happily, and flitted out of the side door into the hall.
"Hello, hello!" Lockhart greeted everyone with an enthusiasm that made Severus want to wring his neck. "Can you all see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent!"
The girl was there, with cronies Weasley and Granger, clumped close to the stage. Granger was staring raptly at Lockhart, but the girl looked resigned. Weasley muttered something in her ear that made her grin. It was probably one the lines of Let's hope they finish each other off.
" . . . me to introduce my assistant, Professor Snape," Lockhart was saying merrily.
. . . And Weasley could count on one of them being finished off, at any rate.
"He tells me he knows a teensy bit about dueling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a small demonstration. But don't worry—you'll still have your Potions master when I'm through with him—never fear!"
Severus realized there was no curse he could cast on Lockhart in front of witnesses that would make this worth it. Anything to compensate for the sheer bloody frustration of enduring Lockhart's existence beyond this point would earn him a prison sentence.
Lockhart prattled at the children about the Disarming Charm. The spell was so simple and pragmatic that Severus figured Dumbledore must have skillfully inserted the suggestion into Lockhart's self-absorbed brain in such a way that he thought it was his own idea; left to his own devices, the evening probably would have been an enactment of his subjugation of the Wagga Wagga Werewolf.
Now Lockhart was bowing at him with flourishes that wouldn't have been overdone in 1640. Wishing he could just start hexing, Severus jerked his head at him in acknowledgment.
"Notice we're holding our wands in the accepted combat position," Lockhart told the students. Severus didn't bother to point out that it was better not to let your opponent get the drop on you by acting the part of the honorable moron; his Slytherins already knew it, and the others would figure it out after they lost a few duels. Well, perhaps not the Gryffindors.
"One!" Lockhart counted. "Two—three!"
"Expelliarmus," Severus barked before Lockhart had finished saying three. He put perhaps more force into the spell than was necessary: brilliant scarlet light rocketed across the stage, slammed into Lockhart's chest, and flung him bodily across fifteen feet of open space, into the wall behind him. He slid, limp, to the floor with a crash. Draco and his group cheered.
"W-well, there you have it," Lockhart wheezed as he tottered to his feet, his hair standing on end. "The, the Disarming! I've lost my wand—thank you, Miss Brown—
"A brilliant idea to show them that, Professor Snape," he said as he staggered back onto the stage, "although if you don't mind my saying, it was pretty obvious what you were about to do, and if I had wanted to stop you, it would have been only too easy . . . "
Severus was going to kill him—not here, but some day. Perhaps the intention had finally registered on Lockhart's wavelength, because he said, "How about some student demonstrations, then?"
So Severus was forced to leave the sanctity of the stage and wade into his hell-sent students. He headed straight for the girl and Miss Granger, who looked up, anxious and wary, to see him bearing down on them.
"You two," he said, pointing at them. If either of them managed the spell properly, which in Granger's case at least was likely, the other girl would only lose her wand. "You're a pair. Weasley, you can partner Mr Malfoy."
Draco strutted over, looking anticipatory; Weasley's freckled face darkened. Severus supposed both Narcissa and Lucius would have strong words with him if Weasley's unpredictable wand did something irreparable to their darling heir, but Lucius should have thought of that before he started scheming. Besides, it was equally likely that Weasley would be rendered worse than helpless by his own backfiring wand.
"I think it was Expelliarmus," Granger was saying to the girl, mimicking Severus's own movement with admirable exactness. He forbore to tell her so.
"Now," Lockhart was saying from the stage, "you'll be casting your spells to disarm only—only to disarm!"
Severus sincerely doubted this injunction would be observed. Weasley and Draco were gripping their wands in a way that promised the nastiest spell they could think of, and of all the confused babble around him, the only ones whom Severus could hear pronouncing the charm correctly were Granger and the girl.
"—three!" Lockhart counted.
A series of deafening explosions rattled the windowpanes and snuffed a third of the floating candles overhead; clouds of multicolored smoke erupted from various spots across the room; a flock of ravens rocketed out from a knot of Ravenclaw sixth years; and while Severus was blinking the afterimages of the light show out of his eyes, Weasley had thrown away his wand completely and was rolling around on the ground with Draco in a headlock. Something hit Severus on the arm, and turned out to be Miss Granger's wand.
"Stop! Stop!" Lockhart was crying above the chaos, flapping his hands.
For the love of— "Finite Incatatum!" Severus shouted, cancelling out all the spells at once.
Smoky haze hung in the air over a hall still babbling with noise, although it was no longer the cries of ineffectual spells and the squeals of their marks being hit. Weasley and Draco were still thrashing around on the floor.
Severus reached down and dragged them apart, or tried to, but they strained against his grip, clawing at each other. Then four small hands appeared out of nowhere and grabbed onto both Weasley's arms: the girl and Granger, hauling him back.
Severus let go of Draco, who dived for his wand lying on the flagstones, and sweeping it up, jabbed it at Weasley. "Serpensortia!" he shouted.
A streak of black shot toward Weasley, but it lost momentum halfway through its arc as it transformed into a giant king cobra as thick as Severus's arm. The snake dropped into heavy coils on the floor and for a moment seemed to lie dazed; then it unwound, raising its head, its hood unfolding.
The surrounding students screamed. Draco, his eyes glittering, blood running down his lip, raised his wand, but Severus grabbed his hand and wrenched it back. The cobra wasn't staring at anyone; in those few seconds, it seemed disorientated, thankfully. Severus moved to vanish it—
"Allow me!" Lockhart cried, and to Severus's horror, the idiot shot a bolt of bright yellow light at the fucking thing. The cobra was flung into the air and came back down, hard, apparently unharmed and now enraged. In that mood it rounded on the nearest target—which turned out to be Granger, and Severus had her wand—
And then Lily's daughter bloody shoved Granger aside, her expression fiercely determined, and opened her mouth as if to tell off a fucking cobra—
And hissed at it in a long, unbroken stream of snake-like sounds.
The snake stopped, as if confused. The girl pushed Granger fully behind her and hissed again, her eyes locked on the cobra as if she expected it to obey her. The sound of her voice wrapping around those syllables traveled down Severus's spine like flashes of cold electricity, rippling out into the hall and the students ringed around them, all of whom fell silent. They wouldn't have heard that sound before, not like Severus had, although they might guess what it was . . .
The cobra sank back, its hood folding into its neck, suddenly docile. The tips of Severus's fingers felt like ice.
"Evanesco," he said, and the snake dried up into nothing, like ash flaking away on the wind.
The girl relaxed, her expression both relieved and pleased. Then she noticed everyone staring at her as if she was now the most unnerving thing in the hall, and she blinked. Around their little circle, whispers rose into the air in angry, frightened mutters.
Weasley, blood running from his nose down his chin and onto his shirt, his expression grim and resolute, grabbed her by her sleeve and started pulling her through the crowd, which parted as though it didn't want to touch them. The girl looked baffled. Of course, raised by fucking Petunia, she probably had no idea . . .
"Miss Granger," he said coldly as she made to hurry past him. "Your wand."
"Oh—thank you, sir—" Looking shaken and bewildered, she grabbed it and ran after Weasley and the girl.
Draco stared after them, his mouth slightly open.
"Well . . . " came Lockhart's voice from the stage. "I . . . suppose that concludes our first meeting . . . "
"Parseltongue," Dumbledore said slowly.
"Yes." Severus was thankful, at least, that Dumbledore didn't ask Are you sure? Bloody biased Gryffindor he may be, but he did not waste time bleating senseless phrases. Well, of a sort. He did like to natter about love and wisdom, but during a crisis he stuck to the point.
This time he was saying almost nothing, and Severus found it almost disquieting. Dumbledore seemed unnerved by the report, more than even Severus was. And he had been reminded of nights in the Dark Lord's service, listening to those sibilant hisses as his pet snakes coiled around the Death Eaters' feet, smelling for scents on their bodies that counteracted their stories of where they had been, what they had been doing . . .
Dumbledore stared in the direction of the fire, but did not seem to be looking into it. He was rubbing the knuckles on his left hand with the fingers of his right, a gesture that Severus had connected to his thinking about something that troubled him.
"What do you think it means?" Severus asked bluntly.
Dumbledore didn't answer or even look at him right away. When he did, his eyes were. . . not troubled, but inscrutable.
"Parseltongue is a rare gift," he said eventually. "Said to be passed on by Slytherin himself."
"He was the most famous, but I really doubt he was the only wizard who has ever had the ability." It was hard to know; any wizards or witches preoccupied with their public image would have kept their Parseltongue a secret, and most historical mentions of self-proclaimed Parselmouths reported them as frauds.
"James Potter wasn't a Parselmouth," Dumbledore said, his eyes drifting toward the fire again.
Severus was starting to feel irritated. Well, it was never very far beneath the surface. "Perhaps it's recessive."
"Recessive?" Dumbledore said, raising his eyebrows, and Severus felt the momentary disconnect he always did when he knew something that Dumbledore didn't.
"Muggle genetics." He drummed the fingers of his free hand on the arm of his chair. "What I mean is that the ability might lay dormant in the blood for generations before revealing itself. Just because Potter wasn't a Parselmouth doesn't mean it never ran in his family."
"It has never run in any of the Potters, as far as I'm aware," Dumbledore said. "And she cannot have inherited it from Lily."
"Well, how could she be a damned Parselmouth if it isn't in her blood? Abilities like that don't just appear."
"No," Dumbledore said quietly. "They do not."
He was clearly keeping something back, perhaps more than one thing. Wheels within bloody fucking wheels, all right.
"I would prefer knowing what you are thinking, Headmaster," Severus said coldly.
"You would in general, I believe," Dumbledore agreed, though with another of those inscrutable looks, as if trying to read Severus's fine print.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Severus snapped.
Dumbledore shook his head, but he was now smiling faintly, as if thinking of a good story he'd heard a short time ago. "I know you're worried, my boy," he said.
Severus sat down his tea cup sharply so he wouldn't break it, because that film of beatitude was spreading over Dumbledore's face, the one that signaled the approach of another nauseating story about the sodding wisdom of love.
"And I admire that in you," Dumbledore said sincerely. "That after all this time—"
"Can you save this?" Severus asked. "I've just had to deal with Lockhart and a morass of mutton-headed students authorized to hex each other to their foul little hearts' content, and I've a pile of end-of-term work waiting to nauseate me for the holidays."
For a moment Severus wondered if he'd succeeded in annoying Dumbledore. But then the old man smiled, and Severus sighed inside.
"Not that anyone would ever believe me," Dumbledore said cheerfully.
"Good thing." Severus sneered. "Since you're so certain the Dark Lord will be returning—a Death Eater who's got a handle on the power of love isn't a Death Eater at all."
"No," Dumbledore said. "He's not, is he?"