Mirror Images

Chapter Four

"OUT! OUT!" Snape shrieked in such a way that even he wilted inside. The boy, Potter of course, stammered nonsense before bolting away with the image of his ashen face imprinted into Snape's mind.

"P'fessor," Filch said, accompanied with a low, toothy whistle. "That was impressive."

Snape seethed in silence as the caretaker fumbled back to his seat.

"P'fessor?"

"Argus," he snapped. "I- of all the students to have seen- blasted Potter- "

"Ah," the grim man said. "A troublemaker, that one?"

"Like none these halls has seen," Snape said darkly. "Or on his way to becoming so. Who's he to be snooping around in the teacher's rooms?"

"Nobody," Filch growled in agreement.

"The nerve of that cretin! " Severus raged. "The absolute audacity- that's all he has! Spades of it... I'll show him..."

The Professor had gotten up to pace angrily, ignoring the shooting pain. Filch thought he looked rather funny, but knew better than to cross the completely qualified Dark wizard.

As a peace offering, he said, "Give him a detention wif' me, and I'll see it done he gets a right good kicking. I have my ways, don't you worry..."

The man stopped his painful pacing to give the caretaker a once over.

"I can deal with this accordingly. Thank you, Argus, but I have ideas already brewing." The smile on his face was truly chilling.

"Well the boy won't know what hit him," Filch said conspiratorially, before slipping out.

Snape felt a small sliver of unease at the ease camaraderie that Filch acted upon with him. He remembered the man from his own school days, and he hadn't been nearly as grouchy then- but then again, his wife had been alive.

Now he was more of a ghost than the ghosts, a walking symbol of misery that Albus Dumbledore felt some measure of responsibility for. So he remained to taunt and terrorise the students, and to be fair it did provide good incentive to follow the rules.

But did Severus Snape truly want to be considered on the same level as Argus Filch? He was verbose, rude, biting- but was Severus truly cruel to the students? He didn't think so. A little bit of taunting grows thicker skin, and Merlin knows that wizard kind cherished their offspring to the point of spoiling.

He'd never seen the benefits of such an upbringing, and certainly experienced the opposite. He would never wish his childhood on another, knowing what turmoil it can sow, but he didn't think complete coddling would result in anything better.

Maybe sometimes he resented it a little, that he never experienced the coddling of a common wizard child. He deserved it as much as the next, but his mother was emotionally weak and a potions addict. She stayed with a muggle man that embodied the opposite of love for wizardry.

Maybe Severus didn't know anything at all about children, and that was the crux of it all. But the fact remained that he was unsettled by Filch's alliance with him. The man had sought him out more and more the past couple years, speaking like old friends, or comrades in arms.

For some reason as he smoothed down the fronts of his robes, Potter's deathly pale face flashed over his mind. There had been shock, sure, a healthy dose of fear, and almost- dare he think it- concern, for the large, bloody wound the boy'd seen.

The way the boy fled, cringing in on himself... he could still see it. No doubt the child had little experience with punishment or scolding. The yelling must've been quite the shock.