[Prof. Umbridge] Chapter 55

Potter came to serve his detentions with Ingebjorg a few more times, but she merely shrugged at Marina Nikolaevna’s questioning looks. The forced viewing of memories led nowhere, and soul-searching conversations (of which the old Seer was a master) didn’t help either.

“She said she’s never encountered such an impenetrable specimen,” Marina Nikolaevna shared with Snape when he dropped by with yet another idea for optimizing the curriculum.

It was a minor issue, but the discussion dragged on, as this small problem, like a grain of sand in clockwork, affected nearly all the teachers.

“Your systematic approach could do wonders in peacetime!” Marina Nikolaevna said in exasperation when they attempted for the eighteenth time to reshuffle the schedules for all seven years, accounting for the four houses and conflicting class times. “And really, calculating all this manually... it’s absurd. We need a programmer! I’m sure a machine could create a timetable in a minute if we provided the correct input data.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about Muggles and their technologies,” Snape remarked, glancing at the pile of scribbled notes. “This requirement for mandatory Muggle Studies, watching their chronicles, reading their literature...”

“Severus, if we survive, I’ll make sure Muggle subjects are added to the curriculum,” Marina Nikolaevna said seriously. “By the way, don’t you ever get tired of reading clumsy essays? Or correcting arithmetic errors in their potions calculations?”

“I admit, it’s only through extraordinary willpower that I resist committing mass murder,” he confessed. “Dolores, they can’t even handle the simplest proportions! That’s why I wrote out recipes for reduced cauldrons so meticulously back then. Because if they’re already periodically blowing up classrooms, what would happen if they had to calculate potion compositions themselves?”

“Maybe they should first calculate it on paper before attempting to brew?”

“And who’s going to pay Slughorn for the extra teaching hours?” he asked reasonably. “My senior students don’t need this anymore, but now he’s stuck with the juniors—thanks to Dumbledore! Speaking of him… Any news?”

“Nothing. It’s like he vanished into thin air,” Marina Nikolaevna said, spreading her hands. “Or rather, dissolved into the autumn mist...”

‘Seeking, so far without any success, a wizard who’s a hundred and twenty, they say, at a guess,’ (1) she couldn’t help but think, but kept the joke to herself. Snape likely wouldn’t understand it, especially in translation.

“Typical of him,” Snape muttered darkly. “I’ll bet he’ll show up at the most inconvenient moment. I’d stake my wand on it.”

“You shouldn’t joke like that, Severus,” Marina Nikolaevna said seriously.

“I remember. I shouldn’t joke at all,” Snape smirked, unconsciously touching his left forearm. “But what’s the point now? The plan failed, didn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so. Perhaps we should have staged it more dramatically. Let’s say… Potter could have found the vial of memories under Dumbledore’s pillow in the hospital wing, fought his way into his office, and seen something he supposedly wasn’t meant to see. But we, boring adults, ruined everything. He saw it, but he didn’t believe it.”

“You know, Dolores,” Snape said quietly, “if I were in his place, I wouldn’t have believed it either. I’d have said such a thing couldn’t be true because… well, it simply couldn’t be true. If I’d been told for years that my father was a wonderful person, an excellent student, a loyal friend, and a true champion of the light…”

“But that would only work if you didn’t remember your father,” Marina Nikolaevna said cautiously.

“Exactly. I remember mine all too well. But Potter doesn’t. He’s only seen photographs. And even Black can’t tell him what James Potter was really like. He doesn’t know himself. All he has are nostalgic memories of their school years and a couple of years after Hogwarts. And who’s to say those memories aren’t partially fantasized? He’s had plenty of time for that, hasn’t he?”

“Well, so did you,” she countered, “except you weren’t in Azkaban, but at Hogwarts. And Black was much closer to Potter than you were. You only saw the… ahem… less flattering side of their group, while he saw the rest. You don’t know what James Potter was like as a friend, husband, or father, after all!”

“No matter how wonderful he was with Black, Lily, and his offspring, it still doesn’t outweigh the memory of being stripped in front of half the school!” Snape snapped unexpectedly. “Just because someone got bored...”

“Severus,” Marina Nikolaevna said, “I wouldn’t have believed it either.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I…”

She bit her tongue just in time, stopping herself from saying she hardly remembered her own parents, had only seen them in photographs, and had been raised by her aunt. Snape might have been, to put it mildly, surprised.

“What?”

“I didn’t even know what my father really did,” she said instead. “I spent my whole life thinking he was… well...”

“A nobody?” Snape suggested delicately.

“Close to it. A janitor at the Ministry—what a stellar career, wouldn’t you say?”

“Better than a housewife to a Muggle alcoholic.”

“You never talk about your parents,” she said after a pause.

“What’s there to talk about? They’re both dead. You’ve seen where I lived.”

Marina Nikolaevna nodded silently.

“I haven’t been back there in years,” he said for some reason. “Not since she died.”

“And what…?”

“I don’t know,” he interrupted. “I just don’t know. I returned from holidays and found out… found out she’d already been buried. In a pauper’s cemetery.”

“And there was no one to ask?”

“The neighbors didn’t know; no one cared about anyone else there. And my father…” Snape grimaced. “You can’t even use Legilimency on someone like him—I tried later, once I’d learned how. It doesn’t work on those who drink themselves into blackouts. One moment he had a wife, and the next, she was gone, and the bills stopped being paid.”

“My mother is a Muggle,” Marina Nikolaevna said. “And as for my father, you’ve heard…”

“I’ve not only heard, I’ve seen him,” Snape suddenly smirked. “Did you really not suspect who he was?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t want me to know.”

“He must care a lot about you.”

“Apparently… If he forgave me after everything I did...”

“Love is a foolish thing, isn’t it?” he said, looking off to the side. “I never understood why my mother married a Muggle. But fine, even if she had some great, otherworldly love for him, why couldn’t she have rid him of his drinking, stopped him from raising a hand to her—or to me? It would’ve been so easy!”

Once again, Marina Nikolaevna bit her tongue to avoid mentioning her brief marriage. Her husband hadn’t been a binge drinker, but still...

“I don’t know, Severus,” she said. “I’ve never felt anything like that for anyone. Affection, attraction… nothing more. I can’t judge from the outside. Now, it’s impossible to know what happened, why you lived… like that.”

“In poverty,” he said, clutching his temples. “In terrible poverty. I wore my mother’s hand-me-downs. Do you know how much they mocked me at school? I mean at the regular school, the Muggle one.”

“I can imagine… but this can be fixed…” Marina Nikolaevna stopped mid-sentence. “Oh, but who am I kidding? It’s not fixable, is it? Look at the Weasleys—I’ve heard plenty about their living conditions, and both parents are competent wizards! I don’t get it!”

“I heard from the neighbors that my father was a decent worker before he drank himself into ruin, and the factory paid fairly well. That’s why I can’t figure out what went wrong,” Snape muttered, shaking his head so his long hair obscured his face. “It’s enough to make you believe that blood traitors lose their magic. Marry a Muggle, and that’s it. It all fits, doesn’t it? The children survive—take me, for example, or even Voldemort, who’s also a half-blood through his father...”

“You are both powerful wizards, and your mothers are no longer alive, although they came from ancient families? And the more gifted the child, the earlier the mother dies. Is that what you are getting at?”

“Exactly. Why not? It’s a solid theory. The magic passes to the child—usually the only child—and leaves the mother with nothing, not even enough to live a full life. But if a wizard marries a Muggle woman, this doesn’t happen. At least, I’ve never heard of it.”

“True, my parents are an example of that…” Marina Nikolaevna mumbled and made a mental note to pass this idea to Percy—he should gather statistics on mixed marriages.

“You can exclude the Weasleys from any analysis. They’re just… reckless, both of them,” Snape scoffed. “Completely incompetent with finances. Besides, Molly’s alive and kicking.”

“So, we’ll exclude them,” she sighed. “And we’ve strayed far from the topic.”

“Which one? The timetable, or…”

“Or!”

“I have no suggestions on the latter,” he said, spreading his hands. “We’ve gone over the situation countless times and concluded: Potter won’t believe these memories are mine, even if I danced the jig naked in front of him and immediately dropped that scene into a Pensieve!”

“I wouldn’t mind watching…” Marina Nikolaevna muttered under her breath.

“That’s not funny!” Snape snapped. “You know that, Dolores!”

“I’ve got a terrible sense of humor, can’t help it…” she admitted, burying her head in her hands. “Severus, do you have any ideas at all?”

“Not a single one. But… I took an oath. I can’t break it. Though I’d very much like to simply poison Potter so he doesn’t have to suffer! I can’t do this anymore—I’ve been at it for fifteen years…”

The door banged open with a crash.

“Then just do it already!” Potter’s voice came from the doorway, thick with emotion. “I can’t take it anymore either!”

“You forgot to add ‘sir,’” Snape quipped. “And the magic word.”

There was a long pause before Potter finally said:
“Please, sir.”

____________________________________________________

• It is a reference to a poem by Samuil Marshak, “The tale of a hero nobody knows”. This is translation of the first stanza of the poem done by Peter Tempest:

                                                    Where can he be?

                                            They are scouring the city-

                                            Reporters, photographers,

                                                      Firemen, militia…

                                   Seeking so far without any success

                                     Someone who’s twenty, they say,

                                                            At a guess

Here is the full translation: https://archive.org/details/tale-of-a-hero-nobody-knows-soviet-children-s-book/mode/2up