Birds of a Feather
Fawkes was worried about his wizard. It must have been an extremely difficult time for Severus, trying to carry out Albus' plan all alone, and it had culminated in that terrible attack in the Shrieking Shack. The poor man had to be traumatized. Fawkes knew a shaman who could help him come to terms with what he'd been through, but first he had to get Severus to the man's village, and Severus was showing no inclination to go anywhere at all.
Repeated attempts to show the captain where he wanted to go had gotten Fawkes nowhere. Captain Clark was either to stupid to understand, or he was deliberately ignoring Fawkes' attempts to communicate. Fawkes suspected the latter. The captain was something like a big seabird, he thought. A skua, perhaps. Skuas are quite smart, and fierce, too, although they're nothing compared to a phoenix, of course.
So Fawkes and his wizard were stuck on this stupid boat. It was frustrating.
But things could be worse. At least the crew seemed to be trying to look after Severus, in their own peculiar way. Severus had no appetite, but Seabiscuit the cook somehow managed to nag him into eating more or less regularly anyway.
The cook also kept trying to bribe Fawkes with sweets. He made a really good dessert thing called pecan pie, and Fawkes was becoming quite fond of it.
~~~
Severus stared out the porthole watching the sun rise. His physical injuries from Nagini's attack were mostly healed, except for some jagged red scars on his throat, but the damage to his soul remained. Perhaps, given enough time, it could heal. He wasn't sure. He didn't know much about souls. Maybe nobody did. Albus had certainly been no help in that regard. If the old man had known anything, he'd kept it to himself.
Thinking of Albus reminded him of Hogwarts. He'd sworn to himself that he was going to put his past behind him, including Hogwarts. Especially Hogwarts. He was going to forget it all and start over, but the memories kept popping up, as memories always do.
Had the school survived? Who would be Headmaster now? Minerva would probably take the helm, assuming she survived. The old Gryffindor was certainly annoying, but she was quite competent, in her own stuffy way. He almost smiled when he remembered how she'd attacked him. She could still put up a good fight. He hoped she was all right. And Filius. And Sprout. And the rest of the staff.
He was going to have to find a copy of The Daily Prophet somewhere.
~~~
A tear trickled down Minerva's cheek and she smiled as she stared at the portrait. She'd always been a hopeless romantic, and she was a sucker for tragic tales of love gone wrong. She'd been rocked when Harry told her the story of Snape's hopeless love for Lily. He'd lived it right under her nose, and she never even knew, never imagined that he'd had that kind of depth. In fact, she'd never imagined that any Slytherin had that kind of depth. She was going to have to try to be a wee bit more open-minded about Slytherins after this.
That was going to take some effort. She'd never liked Slytherins. In fact, it would be fair to say that she strongly disliked them. All of them. She always took points from them whenever she could. That was probably where Snape had learned it, when he was still a student. And when he became a professor - she'd been furious when Albus had hired him - he'd made a point of beating her at her own game. Oh, that had made her so angry! As fast as she could take points from Slytherin, he'd take them from Gryffindor even faster. She'd never missed an opportunity to lecture Albus on what a presumptuous young upstart he was.
She remembered what he'd been like when he'd first arrived at Hogwarts as a boy, so thin and ragged and suspicious of everyone, but so excited, too. Within a year, he'd shed all traces of that Muggle accent he'd had. He was always in the library, and quickly fought his way to the top of his class. She could never find fault with his work, although she'd certainly tried. She'd chalked it up to Slytherin ambition, but perhaps it wasn't really a vice to want to make something of oneself.
She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for him, all those years after Lily's death. The pain must have been unceasing, unbearable. His suffering had been so tragic, so beautiful. She mopped another tear with her handkerchief.
And then, horror of horrors, he'd been forced to kill Albus! He'd tried to refuse, Harry had told her, but when the time came, Snape didn't really have much choice, did he? Had Albus planned it that way, or had it just been Snape's bad luck? It must have shredded the poor man's already damaged soul. And what purpose had it served? It had gotten Snape appointed as Headmaster, of course, but it had also marked him for death as the master of the Elder Wand. She wondered how Snape had reacted when Albus told him about that part.
And why had Albus told her nothing? Nothing about the Horcruxes, nothing about the Elder Wand? She could have helped, if she'd known. Helped hunt the Horcruxes, and helped Snape when he was Headmaster. It hurt to realize that Albus hadn't trusted her enough to tell her.
Snape's year as Headmaster must have been horrid for him, being unable to protect the students properly without giving himself away. It had certainly been horrid for her and the other teachers. But in hindsight, it was obvious that he'd been helping them discretely, behind the scenes. Why had she not seen it at the time? Perhaps because she'd wanted to think the worst of him. He'd certainly gone out of his way to be as infuriating as possible, and it had been a very effective strategy.
It had been madness to attack Severus the way she had, but she'd been so overwrought from the unremitting stress of it all that she hadn't been thinking clearly. After all, she knew perfectly well that she wasn't as fast or as strong as she used to be, and Filius probably wasn't, either. Neither of them had practiced dueling in ages. It was fortunate that Severus hadn't sent the both of them to join Albus. (And just when had she started thinking of him as 'Severus' instead of 'Snape' anyway?)
She shuddered to think of the way that he'd died. That filthy, hideous snake! It was dreadful! He'd been so brave.
And then, to top it all off, the Prince family patriarch, old Reginald Prince himself, had turned up with his solicitor in tow, demanding the body "to entomb with honour in the Prince family mausoleum." She hadn't known whether to laugh or hex the old fool. The Princes had disowned his mother and never acknowledged his existence, but now that he'd been publically acclaimed as a hero and there was talk of the Order of Merlin, they suddenly wanted to claim him as their own. A bunch of hypocrites, that's what they were!
When she explained why the body was not available, the old codger had demanded "some of his relics." Relics??? So she'd fetched a set of his dress robes, and she'd even transfigured a nice silver cloak-pin to put on them - the Princes would never know that it hadn't belonged to Severus. They could put that in their musty old crypt!
The portrait's dark eyes seemed to stare back at her from the canvas. He looked elegant in his black teaching robes, just as he had in life (she' always assumed he'd learned poise by watching that horrible Lucius Malfoy). His right hand held his wand, and his left held a potions book to his chest.
Why hadn't the portrait become animated yet? It had been completed by Wizarding Britain's foremost portrait artist, after all; Harry had insisted on the best. Perhaps it would come alive tomorrow, at the official unveiling ceremony.
She wiped another tear from her eye, and poured herself a wee dram of whiskey. "Here's to you, Severus," she said, raising the glass. Severus Snape had finally earned her respect. It was too bad he wasn't around to appreciate that fact.