Water-horse (Snape fan fiction)

Resistance

Ch.5 — Resistance

"And then what?" Professor McGonagall said sharply. The last few stragglers from her Transfiguration class brushed past them in the doorway, glancing curiously; but she took no notice. "What else happened last night?"

Magnus Lovell, accosted unexpectedly in the corridor on his way back from his afternoon Arithmancy lesson, gave her a look almost as puzzled as those of her earlier class. "What else? Well, we worked — at least, after he'd done with telling me off for daring to talk to his pet pony, I did the work, heating up water, wiping out cauldrons, holding this and that, while Professor high-and-mighty Snape did his usual stir and sniff wonder chef act—"

Appalled, Magnus had dropped his bag and clamped both hands over his mouth instinctively, trying to stem the truculent flow. He hardly dared meet Professor McGonagall's eyes. "Professor, I didn't mean...I don't know what...."

But to his relief, Professor McGonagall's eyes were twinkling behind her glasses. "Oh, I think I've a pretty fair idea what, Lovell, and it'll wear off in a day or two at the latest. Professor Snape tested his potion on you, didn't he?"

Magnus nodded, mutely, barely trusting his own voice. "We brewed up three or four different versions—" he gained confidence — "and he tested them all. And then he told me to drink one, and made me stand over the other side of the room, and gave me orders. All sorts of silly things I was supposed to do, and half the time when I got it right he'd shout at me, and tell me to do something else. I did the best I could, honestly I did, but nothing I tried was good enough."

To his horror, Magnus found the hot tears he thought he'd finally outgrown prickling again at the back of his eyes, as they had not even under Snape's relentless humiliation. He swallowed, hard.

"Professor Snape was furious. He made me drink the other potions—" his mouth twisted in remembered revulsion — and then go through the whole thing all over again. And he kept saying," Magnus swallowed again, "horrible things. All the while. Horrible things...."

Professor McGonagall made a small movement, as if on the verge of reaching out, but checked herself. "And?" she prompted, very gently.

"And...." Magnus hesitated for a moment, flushing.

"I just couldn't take it any more. Something came over me, and I told him if he didn't like the way I did his silly tricks then that was too bad, because I wasn't going to waste any more time trying to get them right, and he could just put that in his cauldron and boil it. And stick in his own head while he was at it, because it didn't matter what he washed it in, it could only be an improvement—"

He broke off. Professor McGonagall, her head buried in her hands, had made a queer choking noise. It might have been a sob.

"Oh dear," she said, emerging after a moment, her voice unsteady. She removed her spectacles and mopped at her eyes. "And what did Professor Snape do then?"

Magnus shivered. "For a second he looked — well, you can guess how he looked." Joseph Lovell, his father's adored elder brother, had been burnt to death by supporters of He Who Must Not Be Named, using the Immolation Curse, when Magnus was only a child. He could still remember the night they'd brought the news, the first and last night he'd ever seen his father cry.... In those instants facing Snape, still numb from the unbelievable things he'd just heard himself say, he'd seen the black murder in the other man's eyes; and known suddenly that hate like that must have been what Uncle Joseph had seen, in those last endless moments as they burned him alive.

He'd been too scared to cry out, let alone to run. But then—

"Then he got this really weird look," Magnus said slowly. "He told me he'd have me expelled, and I said I didn't care, and he — I think he looked pleased...." He shivered again, remembering that queer look of satisfaction, and ambition, and pitiless interest, as if he'd been held up in a jar for inspection like one of those specimens in Snape's office...and yet somewhere, he'd swear, in the whole unreadable mixture, there'd been approval and even a touch of respect.