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Panting and shaken, Severus picked himself up from the floor to face Professor Dumbledore again. He hadn’t been as ready as he’d thought. Blanking out his emotions, like words dissolving off a soaked parchment, had shielded his mind against the first attack. Unfortunately, the headmaster was both cunning and experienced and, on the second try, had overprinted a memory of his own.

“James Potter will make an excellent Head Boy. The fact he could shelve such long-standing animosity to save young Snape’s life shows pleasing maturity.”

That had been enough. The sudden flare of remembering that slap in the face, his enemy rewarded for having second thoughts, boiled off the calm quietude Severus had achieved, to leave a brimstone residue of rage, resentment and bitterness. From his sick disbelief at Potter’s elevation, back to the horror of the werewolf in the tunnel and further back to the humiliation of being stripped in public was a short journey.

Dumbledore had been leisurely picking through the memories, but that one halted him. He broke the spell to stare at the crumpled boy whose composure he’d shattered so easily.

“When did that happen?”

Thin shoulders hunched as an angry young face disappeared behind its curtain of hair.

“During my O.W.L.s.” Severus turned his head away and hugged his arms around his chest.

Silver brows lowered over awakened azure eyes. The headmaster rested a steadying hand on his desk.

“I never knew,” he apologised.

The boy snorted, still staring at the floor.

“You don’t know everything.” You only think you do.

The wrinkles deepened in the wise old face. The silver head bent and the overburdened shoulders rounded.

“Why didn’t you come to me?”

“So you could blame me for provoking them?” Severus accused.

“Did you -”

“I didn’t even know they were there,” he huffed. “I existed. That was all the provocation they needed.” That was all the reason they’d ever needed.

Dumbledore shook his head. 'That couldn’t be right,' he thought. 'Egged on by Sirius and Peter, with Remus perhaps a little shy of restraining their high spirits, young James was over-confident, impatient, a little too pleased with himself sometimes, but he wasn’t a bully. He’d never been a bully.'

“Nothing could justify anyone doing that to you – But are you sure it wasn’t in response to something you’d said or done, perhaps days earlier?”

Black eyes scorned him. Thin lips tightened almost to invisibility.

“You never listen. Go on then, go ahead and have another look at that one,” the boy spat. “Hear it out of Potty’s own mouth if you won’t hear it out of mine!”

Silence lengthened between them. Severus took a deep shuddering breath and slowly unclenched his fists. He’d steered Dumbledore away from that memory twice, from the glimpse of Potter turning him upside down and from Lily Evans’s sharp rejoinder after he rejected her help so rudely. There would be a grim satisfaction in confronting the man with the truth about certain Golden Gryffindors, but he really didn’t want to revisit it again. Ever.

He’d thought about Obliviating himself. He’d spent long hours pondering whether to Obliviate just that memory or everything, restart his life with a blank slate – if that were even possible. But ignorance is weakness and others would remember even if he did not. How could he protect himself if he didn’t know from what or whom?

He forced himself to meet the headmaster’s gaze. Those blue, blue eyes, as deep and endless as the sky. You could get lost in those eyes, float off like a serene cloud across the heavens or maybe drift into isolation in the great outer void where no one would hear you break. It was almost tempting.

“I’m sorry.”

Severus could hear the sincerity in that voice, see the regret. He couldn’t look at him any longer.

“Stop it. Just stop it,” he muttered, fixing his eye on the sharp-cornered desk. The light bounced off the silver instruments that topped it and was absorbed by the dull wood. “That’s past and gone. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. What good will all your sympathy be if He kills me because we wasted time on this instead of Occlusion?” He recognised the truth of his words though he’d said them as a diversion.

“If only it were that easy to dismiss the events that shape us,” the headmaster mused. “Will you ever learn to occlude them if they hurt too much to bandage? I thought it was the Shrieking Shack that turned you, but that was only the last incident, not the pivotal one.”

Severus glowered and didn’t answer. The dispassionate assessment hurt more than it should. He knew he was no more to the man than a failed responsibility. He’d always known, but still he ached at the confirmation.

Dumbledore tried a different tack.

“What made them stop? What happened next?”

The boy disappeared behind his hair again.

“They went to lunch. And I didn’t.” He’d watched them leave then grabbed his wand from one direction and his underwear from another, pulled on the latter with shivering haste and slunk off to the other side of the lake.

“No, you didn’t, did you?” A shrewd gaze scanned him. “I don’t remember any incidents in the Hall.” Mealtimes were almost the only point of contact the headmaster had with students, barring severe misbehaviour. “In fact, now I come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing you there at all in that last week. Not even at the Leaving Feast.” A wrinkled hand covered the old face for one dismayed moment. A student missing from several consecutive mealtimes should have prompted investigation.

Severus scowled and shrugged off the man’s concern.

“There’s food enough on the grounds if you know what’s safe to eat.”

‘Is there? So early in the summer?”

“Raspberries and strawberries are ripe enough. And there are mushrooms and herbs.” Mostly on the edge of the Forbidden Forest or slightly inside it. Hoping the headmaster wouldn’t pick up on that point, he rushed on, “Around the other side of the lake was a whole hedge of Sweet Cicely.”

He’d been too miserable to eat then, but had crawled back later, after the practical exam, to chew on the large anise-smelling leaves with their sugar-sprinkled taste. He hadn’t been able to eat licorice since, it made him sick now.

“So you didn’t face them again that year?”

He reddened and hung his head. It sounded cowardly put like that.

“Not even on the train home?” the man pursued.

“I locked myself in the toilets and secured it with a Do-not-notice.” Severus’s voice was sullen. Couldn’t the man leave well enough alone? By the time sixth year began, the whole thing had been – not forgotten, but not in the forefront. He’d only had to avoid being out of a teacher’s eye amongst groups too large to hex or anywhere near the Marauders. He glowered again at the man’s steady regard.

“I forgive you, all right?” he snapped. That was a lie, of course, but he hoped it would end the discussion. “Now can we move on with the lesson so I can still be alive after the next Meeting?”

“I can’t just forget this happened. I have to speak to them.”

“You can’t. It would blow my cover if anyone wondered how you found out. Justice is a luxury I can’t afford.” Nothing new in that anyway. Justice was for Gryffindors; he’d just be satisfied with being unnoticed.

“Very well. We’ll try again. Blank and calm, let it all go.”

This time he added four names to his mental parchment, Potty, Blackheart, Loopy and Pettyglue. He watched them wash away into nothing along with every pang and pain they’d ever made him feel. It still wasn’t enough.

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A/N This went in a rather unexpected direction. Next chapter will continue with Occlumency lessons.