"Do I dare disturb the universe?"

[sightlesswolf]

Date: Saturday, June 16
Time: 7:30 PM
Location: The Phoenix (for a picture see here)
Characters Involved: ANYONE
Rating: PG-ish?

Comments

[subtle_simmer]

Most of the people present, Severus knew. Colleagues or former students and the like. Having taught at Hogwarts for the better part of the last twenty years, that was to be expected. Not that he gave a Kneazle's arse who was present and who was not. Dark eyes flitted through the crowd, not to register the presence or absence of random guests, but to monitor what remained of his family.

Especially Remus.

They'd arrived together and then drifted somewhat apart as Remus greeted people and assumed the required role of gracious... host? 'Thank you for coming' was hardly a phrase that would flow smoothly past Severus' lips, and June was quite distraught enough. Probably, Remus felt it was his duty.

Which meant that he was putting himself at unnecessary risk, greeting scads of strangers who might be concealing potential enemies. After their conversation yesterday, when Remus informed him that Greyback was behind all of this from the start... Well, Severus did not completely trust Remus not to go off and do something reckless in true Gryffindor style.

Severus had obligations of his own, however. From the moment Albus had entrusted him with being Head of Slytherin House, Severus had been very protective of his 'snakelets' - in his own way, of course.

As he scanned the crowd, he spotted a somewhat familiar individual, though it took him some time to connect the adult woman to the eighteen-year-old girl who had finished school passing through his House during his early years as Professor.

The thing which made her most memorable at this juncture was the recollection of the rather dramatic scene her father had made during her last year of school. Severus had a strong dislike for bullying father-figures and had taken great delight in helping Albus remove the berk from the grounds.

Ensuring himself that Remus was not far away and not in immediate danger, he made his way through the perimeter of the crowd until he could address the individual.

"Miss Blanche, if I recall correctly?" he said with a slight bow of his head. "This is unexpected. What brings you here?"

Not a very tactful question, perhaps, but then Severus was always suspicious, in general. He did not trust the motives of all these strangers coming to offer false, meaningless sympathy. Mandy was an exceedingly reclusive girl, even when she'd been at school. Anyone not intimately acquainted with her, one of the Spinner's End household, or members of her family immediately became suspect. Why should they care that 'one more werewolf' was dead?

[mistressmedea]

Medea turned at the sound of her last name, something about the voice was familiar. As soon as she saw the face, she placed it.
”Professor Snape,” She smiled. Medea did not have what other people would call friends. Still if there was anyone she could be qualified as having vague affection for, it would be her old head of house. He’d been good to her and her housemates, and she could still remember him escorting her father rather pointedly from the school, the headmaster beside him. It was one of the most pleasant memories she had.

Then of course he asked her a question. She considered lying only vaguely. There was really no point, because in some forgotten part of her mind he was still her head of house. He was not her master, but she had been his student for four years. Lying was an extremely pointless exercise for someone who’d known you so long at such a young age. Better an abridged version of the truth.

“A show of support. I didn’t know the young girl, but… I suppose I’m mourning all the potential we’re losing these days.” She hoped he would not blame her for that. She was no threat, and she meant every word. If this had been a private affair such sentiments would have shocked, but at a very public memorial some were bound to be mourning the ideal and not the person. "It's just...such a waste," her eyes drifted to the group of forlorn objects on the memorial.

[subtle_simmer]

Severus looked at her piercingly as she spoke. Contrary to popular belief, he rarely used Legilimency during the course of 'normal' conversation. If he suspected threat or lies, of course, then he had no such scruples, but it was not something he practised routinely.

Nonetheless, his reputation for being able to 'see through' lies among the students served him well even when he encountered former-students beyond Hogwarts.

He supposed it was probably very much like how he still felt around Minerva McGonagall at times - half fearful of his Marks on his next exam.

"I see. Understandable. It is a very tragic waste, indeed."

Unlike her, he did not allow his gaze to alight on the objects collected for the memorial. He'd seen them quite enough. It was almost unbearably painful to look at them, now, and realise the emptiness. Mandy would never again wear the gauzy silk shawl he'd given her at Christmas, or the glasses she worked so hard not to be seen wearing, nor would she ever again hang the ornament Remus gave her on the 'family' Christmas tree....

It wasn't something Severus could easily express, and certainly not with a relative stranger, a former student with whom he would like to retain at least some degree of long-shattered dignity.

"More senseless to those of us who knew her," he said at last. "She would never have done such a thing and had consumed MY potions. Our powers that be did not see fit to allow her to speak on her own behalf nor to give her the merest semblance of justice."

[mistressmedea]

“I can well believe it,” Medea turned away from the objects to look back at her professor. “I wish I was still at the ministry. I would have tried to stop this.” She would too, mostly out of selfish motives, mostly to look like a noble saviour, but partly because of just how senseless this particular waste had been. She was in the wrong department for it, but she would have tried. She sighed. “Sadly father’s later allegiances made that impossible,” she wrinkled her nose and this time allowed her fingers to linger on the collar.

[subtle_simmer]

Severus snorted, his lips twisting into a bitter smirk.

"Again, understood."

Raising his own hand, he allowed one thin finger to tap significantly at the decoration around his own throat. It was clearly visible because he'd taken to wearing is clothing just open enough at the collar to allow it to be so.

"Though, at least in my case, my adornment arises from my own actions and decisions and not random fallout from those of someone else's.

"The sentiment is appreciated. Do not delude yourself that you could have prevented it. The Boy Who Lived to Save Us All could not halt the blind behemoth which has become our Ministry. It certainly would not have listened to reason from anyone else."

[mistressmedea]

His own actions. Yes she remembered hearing of those, somewhere in those years of quiet and permanent terror. She’d been glad to hear there’d been reasons. After all ruthlessness was easier to believe of someone you’d once known than the blind cruelty he would have needed to actually believe in what he was doing. She’d not believed luscious or Bellatrix innocent. Lucious, well she knew far to well the kind of politics he liked to play at the ministry, and she believed him capable of doing anything that would put him at an advantage at the long run. Why shouldn’t he? Mostly she would do the same, but her aims were different and being under you know who’s thumb would never have helped her long term goals. Bellatrix, well she WAS mad but she’d as sooner believed the moon had turned blue than that woman would ever be sane again.

Someone you’d known however, well it was always easier to believe their innocence, because you wanted to. Besides, that would have meant Dumbledore had been wrong, and even so long out of school that idea remained particularly inconceivable to Medea. As usual when confronted with a question of ethics that had no current influence on her long term plans, Medea chose to ignore it, put it away for later.

“I suppose not.” She replied to his last comment, “Still, it's human nature to feel better having made an attempt than forced to watch from the side lines.” She shrugged, “and inactivity begins to irk me.” Well that was true and false at the same time. She was without a job, but she had hardly been inactive. She’d been writing to people, speaking where she could, being seen, anything to make sure that whilst not at the ministry she did not disappear from the political world.

Yet there was a part of her that missed the satisfaction and security of a good old fashioned pay check at the end of the month. Those stupid collars, just another set of chains. She’d break them, she’d break them if it was the last thing she did, Shingleton was the last person on earth she’d let master her.