The Mystery Wife

The usual buzz of conversation and laughter in the Great Hall died down to nothing as the Slytherins made their grand entrance, led by Draco. Every eye in the hall followed them as they marched to their table. Blaise was brash enough to wave.

"Traitors!" Seamus Finnegan bellowed before they could reach the long-abandoned Slytherin table. "Filthy, stinkin'..."

"That is enough, Mr. Finnegan!" Professor McGonagall snapped sharply. "Twenty points from Gryffindor!"

"But, Professor, they..."

"Do not make me take any more House points, Finnegan, I will be very put out with you. Listen to me, all of you," she said, magically amplifying her voice so that it carried through the hall. Every eye was on her, now, and the Slytherins claimed seats at the head of their table without any more fanfare. "These students have returned at the request of the entire faculty, and we honor them for it. They have studied and learned alongside you for seven years, and they have the same right and responsibility as the rest of you to sit their NEWTs and graduate from Hogwarts. I do not want to hear that they are being harassed in any way. They are Hogwarts students, and they are welcome home. Fifty points each to Slytherin for coming back," she added fiercely, and there was a rustling of mutinous whispers in the hall.

Pansy's mouth was open in pure shock.

McGonagall resumed her seat with a final, fierce glare, looking like a bird of prey. The whispers grew louder and more heated, but no one moved to hex anyone else.

"Well done," Professor Snape's voice murmured, audible only to them. They glanced around to look for him, but there was no trace of him. Draco could feel the warmth of him, though, at his shoulder. "Another fifty points each to Slytherin, because I feel like it."

Draco repressed the sudden strong urge to lean back into that warmth, and turned to look up at the hourglasses that marked the House points. A positive avalanche of emeralds was cascading down into the Slytherin glass.

Seven hundred of them.

My god, I love you. Will you marry me?

No. Emphatically not. Certainly not with her being a him, at the moment, and the Headmaster of the school on top of it.

I am so out of my league it's pathetic.

"Told you so," Draco murmured to Pansy, unable to repress a smirk. "About McGonagall. I wonder if she'll notice that it's doubled?"

She had, apparently, as she was looking rather owlishly up at Slytherin's glass. "That's rather egregious, isn't it?" she asked, rising from her chair again and limping toward the hourglasses. "Explain yourself."

"Fifty points each to Slytherin, for the seven Slytherin students who returned to take their NEWTs," an oddly mechanical voice issued forth from the Slytherin hourglass.

She frowned. "Equals?"

"Three hundred fifty."

"That is correct," she frowned. "But that looks like a lot more than three hundred and fifty. How many emeralds are currently in your glass?"

"Seven hundred."

"Cheaters," someone muttered darkly and audibly at the Gryffindor table.

"I dinna tell ye to give them seven hundred. I told ye to give them three hundred and fifty."

"That is correct."

Professor McGonagall rolled her eyes, and her Scots burr became more pronounced, as it tended to whenever she was irritated. "So why are there seven hundred emeralds in ye, ye daft thing?"

"Because Headmaster Snape also awarded the seven Slytherins fifty points each."

She went dead white, and the entire hall went silent.

"Severus?" she rasped.

"Correct," Snape's dry, melodic drawl rang out, and the entire Great Hall erupted in shrieks, whispers, shouts, and from the Slytherin table, laughter.

Professor Snape materialized, so faintly that he could be clearly seen through, and he floated himself into the Headmaster's chair, smirking.

"Holy mother of Merlin," she whispered.

The place fell into an absolute uproar, and for a long, satisfying moment, no one had the heart to tell the students to shut up. Snape visibly let it go on for as long as he dared.

"Enough," he said at last, his voice ringing sharply and a little painfully through the hall. Everyone quieted down at last, though even with a spectral Professor Snape barking at them, more genuinely frightening than he'd been in life, it wasn't quite an immediate thing.

"I suppose explanations are in order," he purred into the eminently satisfactory silence that followed.

"If you please, yes," McGonagall said faintly. "Potter's already told us you were working for Albus all along, even down to his death. He told us about Lily Evans Potter, and your love for her, and the memories you left him." Her voice was getting stronger as she went, finally filling the hall. "Och, Severus, I'm so sorry..."

"Whisht," he cut her off, almost but not quite smiling. "I can honestly say I am happier now than I have been in many years. I am free of following orders, anyone's orders, free of playing my life as Goldoni's Servant to Two Masters, and free to exist as I choose. Finally."

"But, Severus...surely, as a ghost...surely, you realize you are a ghost..."

"Yes, I am well aware of the limitations of ghosts, Minerva," he agreed, hedging rather nicely, Draco thought. "My mind is still my own, however, and I am free to roam as I choose. I believe I will spend a few more days as Headmaster here, see the current class to graduation, and then go off and see the world. It is a wide and fascinating place, after all."

"You can do that?"

"Not all ghosts could. You will find, however, that I can. Who knows? I may even try my hand at a spot of potions research and development, now that I have the free time to do so."

Professor McGonagall found the nearest chair and sank into it. "Och, my goodness..."

Harry Potter had climbed to his feet. He was actually smiling, though his eyes were suspiciously bright. "Welcome back, sir," he called out, his voice a little quavery.

Professor Snape actually almost smiled at him. For Snape, it was a smile, though it was no more than a thin curl of lips, and a slightly less hostile expression than usual. "Thank you, Mr. Potter," he said, with a truly astonishing lack of rancor. "I understand I have you to thank for my posthumous exoneration and Order of Merlin, First Class."

"It was the least of what you were owed, sir. Thank you, for everything."

"Not everything," Ron Weasley said darkly. "George is still missing an ear, thanks to you."

"And he is still alive," said Professor Snape. "I am sorry for his ear, truly, but he would almost certainly be dead if I had not acted."

Weasley glared at him and sat down again, folding his arms over his chest. Hermione Granger was hissing something to him that looked disapproving, though whether it was disapproving of Weasley or Professor Snape, it was impossible to tell.

"At any rate," said Professor Snape, rising from his chair, "all of this is now water under the bridge. Past and done. You all have your futures to consider, now, and you are fortunate to be able to do so. I will tell you what Albus Dumbledore would have told you, if he were here in my place, and I truly wish he were. He was...my friend," the Headmaster frowned, as if testing the words on his tongue for sheer unfamiliarity. "I believe he would have told you to honor the dead, to keep them in your hearts, and to celebrate the lives we lived and the sacrifices we made by enjoying your own lives to the full and making the most of them. The war is over, and you have youth and life and a world of possibilities ahead of you. I wish you all the very best of luck, on your NEWTs and in your lives. May they be long and full, and may you remember this place and each other with affection, with pride, with joy in having been able to call Hogwarts...home."

He swallowed convulsively, looking around him at the walls of the Great Hall as if he would never see them again.

Potter began to clap. For a heartbeat, two, it was the only sound in the hall. And then Professor McGonagall joined him. It caught, it spread, like a fire in brushgrass, spreading along the tables as everyone from the students to the faculty got to their feet.

"Snape's Army!" Millicent crowed, and there were a few laughs and more applause at that.

Professor Snape looked rather stunned. Perhaps a bit uncomfortable, but there had always been something in him that had sought approbation, like the sunlight he had always visibly shied away from, but claimed to be craving, now that the war was over. He acknowledged the ovation with a rather absent wave of one hand, his habitual polished and dangerous smoothness crumbling in the onslaught, leaving the shy, socially awkward academic in its wake.

For the first time in Severus Snape's life, probably the one and only time, he was something he'd always not-so-secretly begrudged in others.

Popular.