Snippets
It was rather wonderful, the way Severus had transformed Albus’ gift. Obviously unfamiliar with the concept of flowers as an aid to wooing, he had instead seized on the mood-roses’ uses within his own field of expertise and made use of them accordingly.
Albus twinkled a little at the mental image of his clever young colleague receiving the bouquet and immediately fathoming its potential. Mood-roses were so rare, only a handful of potions masters in the world had ever been given permission to use them. He visualised the spark of wondrous glee lighting up that maudlin face. Just lovely.
It was rather a pity that Severus had almost burned down, or perhaps up, the dungeons in the process of his research - naturally there were side-effects to using uncommon ingredients, such as not knowing the precise reaction of your substance with the other contents of your workroom. He was probably now preparing an article on the very topic for one of the journals. The headmaster was delighted that the boy had so enjoyed his gift, but he had made no progress towards winning him as a lover.
The mood-roses had been a stunning present, perhaps too stunning. Deciding that simplicity might make a better first impression, Albus pottered out to the gardens and picked a bunch of white carnations - very nice, but also really common and not terribly useful to experimental brewers. Or so he hoped. Not wanting to be responsible for providing his love with the means to blow himself up again, he decided to consult a pyrotechnics expert.
“What on earth are you eating now?” he asked, carefully laying the flowers on his desk and conjuring a simple green ribbon to tie them up.
“Fireflies,” replied Fawkes, with his mouth full. “There’s a new catalogue which lets you order them by post.”
“I see,” said Albus, who didn’t see at all. He noticed the cardboard box punched with holes lying underneath the perch. It was addressed to Professor Fawkes, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. “And they are…pleasant?”
“Taste a bit like chicken,” the bird announced, after a short pause. “Chicken and spark plugs.”
Albus cleared his throat, feeling rather glad that he had only begun communicating with his Familiar recently. This kind of conversation would not have had a positive effect on his stress levels during the war.
“Carnations,” he began. “Are they highly flammable? Explosive? Likely to kill anyone if used in potion making?”
“Depends who’s stirring the cauldron,” he spat out a crumpled pair of wings. “Some people blow themselves up making tea.”
“They are for Severus.” The parts of his cheeks which were not covered by beard were feeling suddenly warmer than the rest of his body. He glanced up to make sure Fawkes had not started slow-combusting, as he sometimes did during the summer months. Apparently this was not the cause.
Fawkes gave a lewd cackle.
“What?” demanded Albus defensively.
“Nothing. Carnation oil is not flammable, old man, but it is an aphrodisiac,” he replied with glee.
The Headmaster gave a dirty cackle of his own. Snape would know that immediately and hopefully work out that his Secret Admirer was not just sending presents out of gratitude for the boy’s pivotal role during the war.
“Don’t you have to be somewhere?” asked Fawkes, choosing another fat firefly and decapitating it with a single bite. Albus immediately grew sombre.
“Yes, thank you for reminding me,” he murmured quietly.
“Aren’t they executing that blond ponce with the gammy leg this morning?”
“Fawkes, behave,” he chided. “Officially sanctioned killing is still killing, no matter what crimes precipitated it. I wish it did not have to happen.”
He tied the ribbon into a simple bow and sent the bouquet straight to the dungeons. Hopefully, the thought of his future with Severus would sustain him through the ordeal he was about to witness.
…….
At dinner the following day, a copy of the Evening Prophet materialised next to Dumbledore’s plate. The front page was a reaction piece about Lucius Malfoy’s execution, this time centring on the internment, which had taken place earlier that afternoon.
He looked up, scanning the hall for Draco, but not finding him. The troubled young man was rarely seen in large gatherings anymore, preferring to sit on his own, out of the way of curious stares or hostile talk. It had taken a tremendous amount of courage to betray his whole family and most of his friends and so far, he had reaped negligible personal benefit, with the very great exceptions of retaining life and liberty. The young tended to take such things for granted. From Draco’s point of view, his conscience had cost him everything that used to matter.
Returning his attention to the paper, he looked at the photograph of the brand-new tombstone and the white flowers in front of it.
“Human nature really is remarkable,” McGonagall commented lightly, peering over his shoulder, “Even a heartless murderer like Malfoy manages to have someone care enough about him to leave flowers on his grave.” Albus was about to reply that he had probably ordered them himself the previous day to give the appearance of being mourned, when his eyes fell on the green ribbon tied around the bunch of carnations.
Severus' flowers.
Severus’ second present was lying in Azkaban’s cemetery as tribute to the life of Lucius Malfoy.
The headmaster knew that the two Slytherins had been close in a way which a Gryffindor found it hard to understand. He hesitated to call it a friendship, but over the years they had formed a bond based on a thick web of admiration, fear and expedience. Albus had rather hoped that Malfoy’s disgraceful conduct and the two old comrades’ violent combat during the penultimate battle would have erased any fondness between them. Evidently, he had been wrong.
Frustration and jealousy propelled Albus up from his seat and outside into the fresh air where no one could see his teeth grinding. His attempts at paying Severus some much-deserved attention were not going well. All he wanted to achieve at this stage was to pique the suspicious teacher’s curiosity, to try and make him believe that he was a prize worthy of careful wooing, to put a little freshness into the airless dungeon apartments. If he was having this much trouble simply giving the boy a bouquet, how on earth was he going to get him into bed?
“Malfoy,” he growled, stalking towards the soothing environs of the lake. He had felt sadness the previous morning as he witnessed the man’s execution, but agreed with the judge’s pronouncement that the only way to stop such an unashamedly self-aggrandising sadist was by ending his life. Even Lucius had given a slight nod in affirmation. As the list detailing his numerous proven crimes - less numerous, all present were aware, than the ones he had got away with - was read aloud, it occurred to Albus that in addition to these terrible tragedies was one far greater. The fact that the bright, handsome and popular boy had become such a monster in the first place.
An unpleasant sinking feeling in his stomach suggested that he himself had been partly responsible for the creation of Malfoy as one of history’s greatest villains; as he almost had been with Severus, as he certainly had been with Tom. Lucius had arrived at Hogwarts the same year that Albus became headmaster, and it seemed from the outset that the older of the two was the more nervous new broom. The boy had confidently assumed command of his house and anyone else who became tangled in his slipstream, in contrast to the old man, who, for all his skills as a war leader, took nearly three years to learn how to control a staff meeting without resorting to magic.
Dumbledore supposed that the air of competence which Lucius projected had not encouraged any of the staff to concern themselves with his development. Light years ahead of his classmates and many of his seniors, he was skilled at concealing his misdemeanours from everyone. Only a very sharp Slytherin could have guessed at what lay germinating inside the outwardly healthy, gorgeous, Quidditch-playing young body. The sycophantic Slughorn was famous for his selective blindness and would only have encouraged his ambition in order to gain another powerful ally.
It would be too easy to lay all the blame at Horace’s door. Albus was the one in charge. The sickle stopped in his wrinkled hand.
He reached the shore of the lake and started violently at the sight of a figure sitting staring at the water. For a moment he thought his reflections had conjured the spectre of the teenager he had failed, but the rational part of his brain, which somehow spoke in Fawkes’ sardonic voice, reminded him that thanks to Severus’ skills as role model and confidant, not all the Malfoys had been lost.
Draco was resting on a rock, motionless, with his feet dangling in the water. This simple pose would have been less disturbing had he not been still wearing his shoes and socks.
“Hello,” said Dumbledore quietly. Draco looked up, then returned his miserable gaze to the depths of the lake. “I’m sorry you have to go through this.” The boy remained still as a statue. “May I sit down, Draco?” He asked. Taking the slight shrug for assent, he perched on a smaller rock, further back from the tiny strip of pebble beach and watched the slow movement of the water.
“You were there,” mumbled the young man despondently. “You watched.”
“Yes, I was - I did,” replied Albus. It was not something he could easily forget.
“How was he?” The lifeless tone was worrying as he requested details of his father’s death. Surely there ought to be some emotion? Anger, sadness, despair - anything at all? Perhaps not. Some people cope by staying completely numb.
“He was…dignified,” said Albus, after a moment. He had watched Lucius’ last moments as avidly as a hawk, yet had not detected the slightest tremor, nor the vaguest flicker of fear on the proud face.
Draco gave a little smirk, as though visualising the event. After sitting silently for a few minutes, he sighed.
“I wanted to buy flowers,” he said quietly. “But there’s no money. I didn’t even have enough for a copy of the Prophet to read their version of events. Professor Snape gave me some carnations which I sent to the graveyard.”
Playing Quidditch as a teenager, Albus had once taken a bludger to the stomach which had knocked him clean off his broom, smacked him against a goalpost and dumped him face down in the November mud of the pitch. The blow had been less startling than this revelation. With another demonstration of practicality and selflessness, Severus had unknowingly put Albus in his place once again.
It made perfect sense that Draco’s mentor should offer support at such an unhappy time, especially as he had been responsible for convincing the boy to break away from Lucius’ dominance, and he who had brought his old ally down on the battlefield. Albus could see the exchange between teacher and pupil as clearly as though he had been in the room. Draco, unaccustomed to his new poverty, would have been frustrated by his inability to perform even this small act of public mourning for his late father. Severus, knowing that an offer of money would have been an insult, would have casually suggested that he had no use for the simple bouquet which had mysteriously arrived earlier in the day, so why not send that?
Albus had learned yet another lesson. Just because the war was over, it must not be assumed that everyone had got a happy ending, or that the job of guiding young minds was any less important. The rejection of the flowers had been for perfectly sensible reasons, not a calculated insult to the sender. For the second time, Severus had behaved more maturely than the suitor who had 117 years on him.
And Albus was even more in love with him for it.
Taking his cue from Severus’ prioritising of serious matters over lighter ones, Dumbledore studied the dejected young man with his wet feet and blank expression, wondering why the image was jogging his memory. There was something so familiar about the way the mixture of grief at having lost everything eclipsed the knowledge that he had done the right thing by betraying all his earlier beliefs.
This realisation grew much more gently than the last, as in Dumbledore’s mind’s eye, the short blond hair grew and darkened, the grey eyes turned black and the small pointed nose grew and hooked under at the end.
Like Severus twenty years earlier, Draco had no future and nowhere to go as reward for his bravery. When term ended, he would be deposited into a world suspicious of his name with no plan for existing without the backing of his powerful father. Albus knew what solution Severus would suggest, and it was in keeping with the strange way in which history kept repeating itself in the wizarding world. But he held back from being rash. Severus was clearly more in tune with this situation than Albus - they ought to discuss his new idea first.
While remaining next to Draco in silent support, the headmaster was already mentally drafting a note to his potions master. They could plan the devastated young man’s future, but also spend some time together. The anonymous gifts were clearly not working as a means of courting Severus, it was time to abandon the strategy and devise a new one.
Quality time.
Albus nodded to himself. They ought to start talking, not just about business matters but about each other, their likes and dislikes, their hopes for the peaceful future. That was the way to start Severus thinking about settling down with a lover, preferably an older, richer, beardier lover with cauldron-loads of attention to lavish upon him. And the altruistic topic of his favourite pupil’s career would be the perfect opening.
Trying not to look too smug in the face of young Malfoy’s grief, Albus rubbed his hands together with delight. Two setbacks was nothing to be ashamed of, given the difficulty of the task. This new idea was bound to work. Severus would be his very soon indeed.
…….
AN: I do love a disillusioned Albus!
Minerva’s comment about even Lucius having someone to mourn him was pinched but not directly quoted from Hound of the Baskervilles, relating to Holmes’ opinion of the escaped convict and his sister.
Albus twinkled a little at the mental image of his clever young colleague receiving the bouquet and immediately fathoming its potential. Mood-roses were so rare, only a handful of potions masters in the world had ever been given permission to use them. He visualised the spark of wondrous glee lighting up that maudlin face. Just lovely.
It was rather a pity that Severus had almost burned down, or perhaps up, the dungeons in the process of his research - naturally there were side-effects to using uncommon ingredients, such as not knowing the precise reaction of your substance with the other contents of your workroom. He was probably now preparing an article on the very topic for one of the journals. The headmaster was delighted that the boy had so enjoyed his gift, but he had made no progress towards winning him as a lover.
The mood-roses had been a stunning present, perhaps too stunning. Deciding that simplicity might make a better first impression, Albus pottered out to the gardens and picked a bunch of white carnations - very nice, but also really common and not terribly useful to experimental brewers. Or so he hoped. Not wanting to be responsible for providing his love with the means to blow himself up again, he decided to consult a pyrotechnics expert.
“What on earth are you eating now?” he asked, carefully laying the flowers on his desk and conjuring a simple green ribbon to tie them up.
“Fireflies,” replied Fawkes, with his mouth full. “There’s a new catalogue which lets you order them by post.”
“I see,” said Albus, who didn’t see at all. He noticed the cardboard box punched with holes lying underneath the perch. It was addressed to Professor Fawkes, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. “And they are…pleasant?”
“Taste a bit like chicken,” the bird announced, after a short pause. “Chicken and spark plugs.”
Albus cleared his throat, feeling rather glad that he had only begun communicating with his Familiar recently. This kind of conversation would not have had a positive effect on his stress levels during the war.
“Carnations,” he began. “Are they highly flammable? Explosive? Likely to kill anyone if used in potion making?”
“Depends who’s stirring the cauldron,” he spat out a crumpled pair of wings. “Some people blow themselves up making tea.”
“They are for Severus.” The parts of his cheeks which were not covered by beard were feeling suddenly warmer than the rest of his body. He glanced up to make sure Fawkes had not started slow-combusting, as he sometimes did during the summer months. Apparently this was not the cause.
Fawkes gave a lewd cackle.
“What?” demanded Albus defensively.
“Nothing. Carnation oil is not flammable, old man, but it is an aphrodisiac,” he replied with glee.
The Headmaster gave a dirty cackle of his own. Snape would know that immediately and hopefully work out that his Secret Admirer was not just sending presents out of gratitude for the boy’s pivotal role during the war.
“Don’t you have to be somewhere?” asked Fawkes, choosing another fat firefly and decapitating it with a single bite. Albus immediately grew sombre.
“Yes, thank you for reminding me,” he murmured quietly.
“Aren’t they executing that blond ponce with the gammy leg this morning?”
“Fawkes, behave,” he chided. “Officially sanctioned killing is still killing, no matter what crimes precipitated it. I wish it did not have to happen.”
He tied the ribbon into a simple bow and sent the bouquet straight to the dungeons. Hopefully, the thought of his future with Severus would sustain him through the ordeal he was about to witness.
…….
At dinner the following day, a copy of the Evening Prophet materialised next to Dumbledore’s plate. The front page was a reaction piece about Lucius Malfoy’s execution, this time centring on the internment, which had taken place earlier that afternoon.
He looked up, scanning the hall for Draco, but not finding him. The troubled young man was rarely seen in large gatherings anymore, preferring to sit on his own, out of the way of curious stares or hostile talk. It had taken a tremendous amount of courage to betray his whole family and most of his friends and so far, he had reaped negligible personal benefit, with the very great exceptions of retaining life and liberty. The young tended to take such things for granted. From Draco’s point of view, his conscience had cost him everything that used to matter.
Returning his attention to the paper, he looked at the photograph of the brand-new tombstone and the white flowers in front of it.
“Human nature really is remarkable,” McGonagall commented lightly, peering over his shoulder, “Even a heartless murderer like Malfoy manages to have someone care enough about him to leave flowers on his grave.” Albus was about to reply that he had probably ordered them himself the previous day to give the appearance of being mourned, when his eyes fell on the green ribbon tied around the bunch of carnations.
Severus' flowers.
Severus’ second present was lying in Azkaban’s cemetery as tribute to the life of Lucius Malfoy.
The headmaster knew that the two Slytherins had been close in a way which a Gryffindor found it hard to understand. He hesitated to call it a friendship, but over the years they had formed a bond based on a thick web of admiration, fear and expedience. Albus had rather hoped that Malfoy’s disgraceful conduct and the two old comrades’ violent combat during the penultimate battle would have erased any fondness between them. Evidently, he had been wrong.
Frustration and jealousy propelled Albus up from his seat and outside into the fresh air where no one could see his teeth grinding. His attempts at paying Severus some much-deserved attention were not going well. All he wanted to achieve at this stage was to pique the suspicious teacher’s curiosity, to try and make him believe that he was a prize worthy of careful wooing, to put a little freshness into the airless dungeon apartments. If he was having this much trouble simply giving the boy a bouquet, how on earth was he going to get him into bed?
“Malfoy,” he growled, stalking towards the soothing environs of the lake. He had felt sadness the previous morning as he witnessed the man’s execution, but agreed with the judge’s pronouncement that the only way to stop such an unashamedly self-aggrandising sadist was by ending his life. Even Lucius had given a slight nod in affirmation. As the list detailing his numerous proven crimes - less numerous, all present were aware, than the ones he had got away with - was read aloud, it occurred to Albus that in addition to these terrible tragedies was one far greater. The fact that the bright, handsome and popular boy had become such a monster in the first place.
An unpleasant sinking feeling in his stomach suggested that he himself had been partly responsible for the creation of Malfoy as one of history’s greatest villains; as he almost had been with Severus, as he certainly had been with Tom. Lucius had arrived at Hogwarts the same year that Albus became headmaster, and it seemed from the outset that the older of the two was the more nervous new broom. The boy had confidently assumed command of his house and anyone else who became tangled in his slipstream, in contrast to the old man, who, for all his skills as a war leader, took nearly three years to learn how to control a staff meeting without resorting to magic.
Dumbledore supposed that the air of competence which Lucius projected had not encouraged any of the staff to concern themselves with his development. Light years ahead of his classmates and many of his seniors, he was skilled at concealing his misdemeanours from everyone. Only a very sharp Slytherin could have guessed at what lay germinating inside the outwardly healthy, gorgeous, Quidditch-playing young body. The sycophantic Slughorn was famous for his selective blindness and would only have encouraged his ambition in order to gain another powerful ally.
It would be too easy to lay all the blame at Horace’s door. Albus was the one in charge. The sickle stopped in his wrinkled hand.
He reached the shore of the lake and started violently at the sight of a figure sitting staring at the water. For a moment he thought his reflections had conjured the spectre of the teenager he had failed, but the rational part of his brain, which somehow spoke in Fawkes’ sardonic voice, reminded him that thanks to Severus’ skills as role model and confidant, not all the Malfoys had been lost.
Draco was resting on a rock, motionless, with his feet dangling in the water. This simple pose would have been less disturbing had he not been still wearing his shoes and socks.
“Hello,” said Dumbledore quietly. Draco looked up, then returned his miserable gaze to the depths of the lake. “I’m sorry you have to go through this.” The boy remained still as a statue. “May I sit down, Draco?” He asked. Taking the slight shrug for assent, he perched on a smaller rock, further back from the tiny strip of pebble beach and watched the slow movement of the water.
“You were there,” mumbled the young man despondently. “You watched.”
“Yes, I was - I did,” replied Albus. It was not something he could easily forget.
“How was he?” The lifeless tone was worrying as he requested details of his father’s death. Surely there ought to be some emotion? Anger, sadness, despair - anything at all? Perhaps not. Some people cope by staying completely numb.
“He was…dignified,” said Albus, after a moment. He had watched Lucius’ last moments as avidly as a hawk, yet had not detected the slightest tremor, nor the vaguest flicker of fear on the proud face.
Draco gave a little smirk, as though visualising the event. After sitting silently for a few minutes, he sighed.
“I wanted to buy flowers,” he said quietly. “But there’s no money. I didn’t even have enough for a copy of the Prophet to read their version of events. Professor Snape gave me some carnations which I sent to the graveyard.”
Playing Quidditch as a teenager, Albus had once taken a bludger to the stomach which had knocked him clean off his broom, smacked him against a goalpost and dumped him face down in the November mud of the pitch. The blow had been less startling than this revelation. With another demonstration of practicality and selflessness, Severus had unknowingly put Albus in his place once again.
It made perfect sense that Draco’s mentor should offer support at such an unhappy time, especially as he had been responsible for convincing the boy to break away from Lucius’ dominance, and he who had brought his old ally down on the battlefield. Albus could see the exchange between teacher and pupil as clearly as though he had been in the room. Draco, unaccustomed to his new poverty, would have been frustrated by his inability to perform even this small act of public mourning for his late father. Severus, knowing that an offer of money would have been an insult, would have casually suggested that he had no use for the simple bouquet which had mysteriously arrived earlier in the day, so why not send that?
Albus had learned yet another lesson. Just because the war was over, it must not be assumed that everyone had got a happy ending, or that the job of guiding young minds was any less important. The rejection of the flowers had been for perfectly sensible reasons, not a calculated insult to the sender. For the second time, Severus had behaved more maturely than the suitor who had 117 years on him.
And Albus was even more in love with him for it.
Taking his cue from Severus’ prioritising of serious matters over lighter ones, Dumbledore studied the dejected young man with his wet feet and blank expression, wondering why the image was jogging his memory. There was something so familiar about the way the mixture of grief at having lost everything eclipsed the knowledge that he had done the right thing by betraying all his earlier beliefs.
This realisation grew much more gently than the last, as in Dumbledore’s mind’s eye, the short blond hair grew and darkened, the grey eyes turned black and the small pointed nose grew and hooked under at the end.
Like Severus twenty years earlier, Draco had no future and nowhere to go as reward for his bravery. When term ended, he would be deposited into a world suspicious of his name with no plan for existing without the backing of his powerful father. Albus knew what solution Severus would suggest, and it was in keeping with the strange way in which history kept repeating itself in the wizarding world. But he held back from being rash. Severus was clearly more in tune with this situation than Albus - they ought to discuss his new idea first.
While remaining next to Draco in silent support, the headmaster was already mentally drafting a note to his potions master. They could plan the devastated young man’s future, but also spend some time together. The anonymous gifts were clearly not working as a means of courting Severus, it was time to abandon the strategy and devise a new one.
Quality time.
Albus nodded to himself. They ought to start talking, not just about business matters but about each other, their likes and dislikes, their hopes for the peaceful future. That was the way to start Severus thinking about settling down with a lover, preferably an older, richer, beardier lover with cauldron-loads of attention to lavish upon him. And the altruistic topic of his favourite pupil’s career would be the perfect opening.
Trying not to look too smug in the face of young Malfoy’s grief, Albus rubbed his hands together with delight. Two setbacks was nothing to be ashamed of, given the difficulty of the task. This new idea was bound to work. Severus would be his very soon indeed.
…….
AN: I do love a disillusioned Albus!
Minerva’s comment about even Lucius having someone to mourn him was pinched but not directly quoted from Hound of the Baskervilles, relating to Holmes’ opinion of the escaped convict and his sister.