Good For Everything

Chapter One: An Introduction to Idiotic Expressions

When Severus Snape had become a social worker in his early twenties, he'd made up his mind that he was going to help people as best he could, for though he'd not been helped as a child, he strove to do better for the future generations. He had been doing social work for a good seventeen years and he had a good position within the network he worked in, but he resented the fact that his co-workers seemed to want him to date, or, perhaps, just get out more, and not be sworn in marriage to his work. In Severus's mind, it wasn't as if he wasn't fulfilled in other ways; he had his family's fortune to consider but, due to his frugal ways, he'd barely had to dip into it since he'd gotten it at twenty-five, as well as the frequenting of bookshops he did on the weekends and such. With his parents and grandparents dead and having no siblings to speak of, Severus was alone, and he liked it that way.

Albus Dumbledore had been the overseer of the network Severus was based in since before he had even joined it, and although Severus didn't necessarily count Albus as a close friend, he did trust the man. Severus was on the second tier within the network, having achieved the title of "senior social worker" within a few months of his hiring, due to the shortage within the network during that period. There were three other senior social workers on staff—Minerva McGonagall, a no-nonsense widow who was tough but fair; Filius Flitwick, a short little man who took on notoriously difficult cases, and often taught children to laugh at themselves; and, finally, Pomona Sprout, who decorated her office as if it was a botanical garden, and frequently applied plants to her analogies when explaining things to the children she was in charge of.

So suffice it to say when Severus arrived at the office of Magical Kinship on Monday morning, nursing his first of two morning cups of coffee, he stepped into the lift as per usual, drinking it, and pulled out his pager, knowing that he was slightly late. He was behind that morning not only because there was a particularly effervescent gaggle of schoolgirls in front of him at the local coffee stop, but also because he'd stayed up an extra forty-five minutes to read the latest chapter in The Wicked Count and the Secret Masquerade, the fifth in a series of romance novels which Severus had picked up and couldn't put down, about the sexual exploits of a homosexual count in pre-Revolution England. In the last three books, he'd caught the attention of an older marquis, and there was just no way to guess what would ultimately happen next.

Just as the doors were about to shut, with Severus quickly snapping out of the fantasy of the marquis bending the count over the desk of his own study, one of the newer recruits barged in, and flashed Severus his smile. The smile in question, according to the newcomer, had gotten him lots of points during uni. Severus bestowed upon him his typical grimace, and mentally crossed his fingers that the man wouldn't speak, for the only thing he had to ever say was words of praise about himself, as well as personal questions about those around him.

His prayers went unanswered.

"Severus!" Gilderoy said, all the while continuing to beam at him. "How are you this morning? I trust your weekend went well."

"Quite," Severus replied, his tone clipped, hoping that Lockhart would get with the program and belt up. He was so close to smacking his head upon the side of the lift; almost none were more intolerable than Gilderoy, although Dolores Umbridge, whom he was convinced was a sadist, was easily ahead of him.

"I dozed off a bit early, myself," Lockhart went on, and Severus gritted his teeth, hating it when the man constantly nattered on. "You probably have a bigger case-load than I do. Don't know why that is," he continued, "given all the self-help books I've written."

Severus managed to win the battle of rolling his eyes; even Albus knew that Lockhart's supposed self-help books were fakes. The words and methods themselves were real, but the notion that someone as inept as Lockhart taking credit for them was downright laughable. "Tell me again which was your first one," Severus muttered.