#serosvit

Severus was an annoying student. He was. Not like Hermione, he didn’t volunteer to answer questions, oh no. He asked questions. And here we are, first week of Transfiguration, Minerva is talking about perfectly reasonable topics for, you know, first years, and then this kid just raises his hand and asks a question about a sixth year subject (he’s been reading his mom’s old books since he learned how to read so). First times it happened Minerva just politely steered the class back to what they should be learning. He was good but he didn’t really participate in class except to interrupt it with unrelated questions, so really, the teachers didn’t really like him all that much.

She gave him so many detentions for cussing at the smallest of things. He got a really dirty mouth (she did too, but she was subtle about it). Add that do the fact that his problem solving skills were basically “hex them, or if you can’t, punch them” and the impression she got from his school years were that he was a nasty kid, no real surprise when he started to get on with the crowd he did.

She wondered if Albus went mad when he brought Severus to teach, and she protested quite vehemently against it. The boy was a Death Eater, Albus, for fuck’s sake (He’s working for us, Minerva, and he’s hardly a boy anymore), he can’t possibly be qualified to teach already (He was the best Potions’ student we had in decades and you know it, my friend), besides, he’s got the worst temper I’ve ever seen (… I’m sure he’ll warm up!). He didn’t. He exchanged maybe two words with his colleagues during his first two months teaching.

Halloween came, Voldemort fell, Severus became a ghost. Aurors came for him and Minerva saw only resignation when it happened. He was even worse when Albus brought him back a few weeks later. The rest of the term passed in a blur.

He looked changed during a faculty reunion in summer, distant and more serious, but better put together. He announced he decided to up his standards for NEWT level students on the next year, accepting only Os. She fought against it because, honestly, under Slughorn’s teaching they got around 10 Os a year, when they were lucky, with plenty of Es, he couldn’t possibly raise those standards without alienating half the possible students. Albus backed him up and he did it anyways. First year he taught exactly 7 students on his NEWT classes, but the number started to grow steadily, just as the number of serious accidents dropped. She had to admit he was competent.

That made her decide to give him a chance and she started to try to initiate random conversations with him, and that’s when she found out: he couldn’t hold a casual conversation to save his life. He had absolutely no social skills. Oh he could pretend and hold his own when he had to, but a simple talk? With nothing at stake? He was absolutely lost. He could snark though, and she could work with that. She started to make little comments about other teachers, or about the students rumor mill, and at first he’d get suspicious til he noticed she had no second intentions. It felt nice to have someone talking to him just because, so he answered. The first time he initiated it she got really happy.

They made bets on Quidditch, not only on their own houses, on all of them. They bet on individual game results, on the top scorer, on who would catch the snitch, on championship placement. It was paid in paperwork, Minerva’s idea.

They also made bets on how the DADA teacher of the year would leave. It was Severus who started this one and in the beginning Minerva would insist it was in poor taste and he shouldn’t say those things, til she gave in and accepted the bet. This one was on money.

Minerva included him on her Christmas list and always gave him useful gifts. He got so shocked the first year she did it (it was a pair of work gloves, easily adjustable for fine or hard work) he spent a good half an hour staring at them before running to find something to give her. It was already Christmas morning so all he found was a forgotten tin of fancy biscuits at a 24h convenience store. He was slightly ashamed of it but she took it and invited him to have them with her over tea. He started planning what to give her in the next Christmas right away.