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Loving Hatred
For "Gu's Fanfiction Contest"
Word Count: 2253 words
Professor Judah Meyer, the new Arithmancy teacher and the man least likely to drive the rest of his colleagues to madness, stood at the closed door of the Potion Master’s office with a stack of parchment in his hand. With agitation, he smoothed his lengthy coal hair secured by a simple black ribbon because he wanted to look mildly presentable. He knew that if he wanted even a moment of the Potion Master’s time, he needed to look good. After knocking on his door, he reached under his robes to fumble with the rosary around his neck. It had no magical powers, but it gave him comfort.
The door opened, revealing the disdained face of Severus Snape. His hair looked as greasy as always, and his hooked nose always reminded Judah of a vulture. As usual, his teacher’s robes looked rumpled. Meeting Judah’s violet eyes, he said in a dead-pan voice, “My day was going magnificently until this moment.”
Judah, always trying to be courteous, offered a cordial smile. “I am glad to hear that you were having a good day.”
“Hardly.” When he folded his arms, they seemed to disappear under the robes. “What business do you have with me?” Upon seeing the stack of manuscripts, the Potions Master growled and replied, “Judah, I made myself clear. I will not participate in your ‘Secret Santa’ exchange or whatever you call it. I have no interest at all.” He reached to close the door. “Good day.”
He stopped the door, pushing it open. “This has nothing to do with my brother’s schemes. My business concerns you. If you let me in, I can be concise and then leave you to your affairs.”
“And why should I allow you in my office?” he sneered, shoving the Arithmancy teacher away with one strong push.
Sighing, he straightened up. “I would like to formally apologize for dumping you out of your chair that evening during dinner.” He met the teacher’s dark eyes. “Does that suffice, Severus?” Seeing that he was still quite unhappy, he groaned inwardly as he added, “It was wrong of me, and you are as good an instructor as anyone else.”
“Far better than the damned Dark Arts teacher,” he growled, reluctantly allowing him inside. “What is this about the manuscripts?”
The office reflected Severus’ macabre and stern disposition. He sat down in a stiff, uncomfortable chair. To him, it was no surprise that the Potions Master had no pictures on the walls of his office because they’d be terribly distracting. Moreover, they would cut down on his privacy. “The manuscripts in my hand came from students. Either students will carelessly leave them in my room or other students turn them in. I—” He paused, hesitating to say more as he shuffled around the papers in his hands. “I am uncertain as to where some of the students get their ideas, but I think that you should hear a small excerpt.” He cleared his throat, shuffling around a few more pages. “Let’s here,” he said vaguely, half to himself. “I know that I have it somewhere….”
Severus sighed in exasperation, already losing his patience as he loomed ominously over the other. “I’m waiting, Judah. Forgive me. Herr Meyer.”
He ignored the clear jab at his German heritage. “Ah! Here we are.” Again, he coughed to clear his throat. “I…Please be warned. None of this is my own creation.” After glancing between the paper and the Potions Master, he began reading. “Filius stood stark naked before the Potions Master, his rich white hair like—” He furrowed his brow. “—Like new straw. ‘Professor, teach me about myself,’ he asked. ‘Show me how to love another man.’ The Master removed his clothes as he talked to beautiful Filius. ‘I shall show you what to do—’”
Severus stiffened, his dark eyes growing with every word until it seemed as though they would pop out of his head.
“—His white skin was like moonlight, and hanging between his legs—”
“Enough!” he barked, showing pearly teeth as he snarled to himself. It looked as if he might start foaming at the mouth. “I would never, under any circumstance, ever engage in such vulgar acts with another teacher!” Fixing his piercing gaze on the seated teacher, he demanded, “Why are you telling me about this?”
Blush tinged Judah’s otherwise pallid cheeks. “I knew this would upset you greatly. I am giving you these manuscripts so that you may burn them. Some of the students—” To him, the very idea seemed bizarre. “They fantasize about you, sir.” He shuffled through some of his papers. “These are mostly from girls, Slytherins more often than not. Some are about you and the girls, some of them are about you and another male student and some of them are even more disturbing.” He handed over a particular sheet.
Staring at the parchment for a few moments, he cautiously took it to scan. “Oh…Oh, Merlin. This is about me and you.” He leered at the German with riveted eyes. “And your brother too. Why have you kept such filth?” And for that matter, badly written filth. There was nothing here to arouse excitement in his loins.
Judah canted his head with a self-deprecating smile. “Since all of this concerns you, I doubted that you would want anyone but yourself to keep it. Even if you burn it, you wouldn’t want, say, the Dark Arts teacher coming upon this beforehand.”
His angry face was suddenly inches from Judah’s nose, his wand poised to gut him or worse. “You would never.”
“No!” He pushed his chair back in hopes of creating distance. “That is why I gave these things to you!” He swallowed hard, staring at the wand. “Do not attack me. I have no wand on my person.” Judah felt sweat on his neck and brow because the wand stayed poised. “Severus, you are better than this.” He held out the hand containing the manuscripts, his eyes begging for no confrontation. “Take them. Mein Gott, take them.”
Frowning, he snatched the stack without a word of gratitude. He leafed through the pages, anger apparently subsiding. “This should not shock me. Judah, I have something that might be of interest to you.” He went behind his desk, stuffing down on stack of parchments in a drawer only to produce another stack. “I snatched these from students who chose to write instead of do their work in my class. Students also turned in these pages to me.” Rather politely handing it over, he dropped the stack on his desk. “Stories about you. In many of them, you have encounters with students and your brother.”
The poor Arithmancy teacher swallowed hard to push down the bile which had risen in his throat. He reached into his robes to rub the cross on his rosary. “Severus, why did you keep these?”
He grumbled under his breath before saying, “Foresight. I sensed that you would come to my office for some trivial matter, although I hadn’t expected that we would be exchanging stacks in a sort of twisted gift-giving ritual.”
Judah couldn’t help smiling. “For all of your acting like the Gestapo, you do have a sense of right and wrong which I respect, Severus.”
While he didn’t show it, he greatly appreciated the compliment for the simple fact that Judah was the only new teacher who didn’t take every opportunity to torment him. “There is still the matter of cease and desist. We must stop this.”
Moving his chair closer to the desk, he had to ask. “Do you have any ideas? It—well, I cannot say yet if it is harmless.”
“It is humiliating,” he spat, seeming to hiss. “If it falls into the hands of a brazen, rule-breaking student, it could ruin my reputation.” Pausing, he added hesitantly, “And yours, I suppose.” The piercing gaze returned without warning. “Would you call it ‘harmless’ if these obscene writings fell into the hands of Professor Szarka?” Severus and Dark Arts teacher were hostile to each other at best. “Surely you can imagine how he would tarnish my already disgraced name. And what about that wholly unprofessional brother of yours? No matter where I turn, I see them laughing at me.” He started getting unhealthy facial tics which Judah saw so often when hot wrath began bubbling up. “It is as if I am reliving my life as a student.” Suddenly, he seemed to gain composure as if he had remembered himself. Apparently, he had revealed more about himself than intended. “On the other hand, you may be right. It is better to not pique the students’ awareness. We can continue to quietly collect these papers and burn them.”
“I think that might be best.” He shrugged because there seemed nothing else to be done. “And I don’t think that it will compromise your reputation. At least, not to me.” A playful smile came to his lips. “You Englishmen do not know enough about damage control.”
“And you Germans haven’t recovered your reputation since your fallen empire so let us call ourselves even,” he replied, a simper creeping across his face like a small lizard.
That was unreasonably harsh of him to say. Most of the time, Judah could allow the usual passing jabs at his nationality to slide by without even a flinch from him. But he was still very proud of where he had come from and very angry at what had happened to it within the century. Severus would have known not to mention the Third Reich. “I know that you don’t like me.”
Severus grimaced snidely. “What on this green earth ever gave you that idea?” he asked sardonically.
He stood up, moving toward the desk. It had taken him years of work, but he could finally control his anger with regard to such a sensitive topic. “What is it, Severus?” he demanded in a firm voice. “You don’t like that I’m Catholic and I flaunt my beliefs for everyone to see? You don’t like that I’m a German national who does nothing to hide my roots?” He narrowed his eyes, locking the other’s gaze as he said in a level, challenging voice, “You don’t like me and I can’t understand why when I try to treat you better than most.”
Suddenly, he was on his feet with his back arched as he leaned toward him. “Do you want the truth, Judah?” he hissed, eyes seeming to drill right into his colleague. “You hardly strike me as anyone with much of a gift when it comes to magic, and yet people like you. They like you. Even that nefarious, treacherous Szarka likes you. He certainly does not take every opportunity to humiliate you.” Now he truly was starting to foam at the mouth while he talked, his sallow face suffusing with blood from all of his ire. His face started twitching without reason. “I, I hate that because I can’t be like that. I never could be like that. You have this charismatic charm, a decent appearance, and such a morality that I am convinced it is a façade.” He turned away, twitching more noticeably. “I keep hoping that you will show your true nature as a fraud, but you never do. No matter what happens you manage to not be a hypocrite.” Severus glared at the German over his shoulder.
Wide-eyed and with a gaping mouth, Judah groped for proper words in his mind. Of course, the Potion Master hardly gave him a moment to speak. “But you know what I hate more than anything else? Judah, you are still a young man.” He was practically shaking now from twitching so much. His breathing seemed labored and his eyes looked bloodshot. Severus’ face had become twisted by old pain as he barked, “You have everything I never did, Judah! You have faith, you have friends, and you have family. But most of all, you have hope just like that damned Harry Potter. Never in your lifetime will you suffer as I have suffered. Never in your lifetime will your past haunt you. What do I have, Judah?” He slammed his fists on the desk. “What do I have!”
The only noise in the room was the impassioned panting of Severus as Judah stared dumbfounded by this abrupt outpour of emotion. He watched the Potion Master slowly gain his composure once more, the wild and demented expression leaving his eyes. When it looked as though he had gained his rational sense again, Judah reached into his robes to produce a sizeable flask of deep red liquid. “This is a potion base I mixed up from my own ingredients.” Sheepishly, he set it on the desk. “Present for you. You aren’t supposed to know, but I got your name for the ‘Secret Santa’ ritual.” He was still groping for words. “This seems like the best moment to give it to you.”
Furrowing his brow, he slowly picked up the flask. “…You’re giving me this after everything I said?” It wasn’t one of the most touching things that anyone had ever done for him, but it was the nicest thing that any of the new teachers had done that year. “Why?”
“Whether you think so or not, you’re a good teacher.” He shrugged, offering a kind smile. “You can be very mean to your students, but I can tell that you care about them. You want them to understand what the world is really like.” He glanced down for a moment, chuckling. “You cannot rely on your parents all of your life, after all.”
A plaintive expression crossed his face as he studied the flask. “No, you can’t.” Swallowing hard, he turned back to the Arithmancy teacher. “…Thank you, Judah. But this is still one of the reasons why I don’t like you.” But as he said those words, there was warmth in his eyes that didn’t appear often. He didn’t smile, but he wasn’t scowling anymore.
“Merry Christmas, Potion Master.” After a few awkward moments, he nodded to the door. “I have some German beer in my office.”
For a long time, he didn’t reply. He looked torn between two opinions. Even if he ever formed some sort of tolerable friendship with this man, it wouldn’t change anything. He’d still have his sordid life to deal with and the dreams that plagued him in his sleep. But, maybe the waking hours would be a little easier to bear. Finally, Severus set down the flask before digging up the stack which Judah had given him. He looked emotionally and physically drained, but he also looked at ease for once. “We should burn our papers in the same fire. It’ll save us both some time.”
Judah chuckled, shaking his head. “I’ll take that as a yes, then.”
 Persephone13 · Fri Dec 28, 2007 @ 05:31am · 0 Comments |
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