Here's the second chapter!
With some background Drarry.
Snape and Dumbledore both nonbinary and in their thirties navigate mentorship.
Snape is fed up with Harry's folies.
The parchments scattered on the floor were still smoking when Snape shoved the door open. He didn’t knock. He never knocked. His cloak snapped like a storm front as he cut through the office.
“You will hear me this time,” he said.
Dumbledore didn’t look up at once. They were bent over some half-melted contraption of brass and crystal, coaxing sparks into obedience. The lilac eyes lifted at last, maddeningly calm. “Will I?”
“Potter,” Snape spat, and the syllables hit the desk like venom. “Your golden boy climbed the Astronomy Tower last night. Alone. In the middle of the night. He had the brilliance to attempt a summoning charm strong enough to rip the shingles clean. If Filch hadn’t dragged him down, we’d be sweeping him into buckets.”
Dumbledore hummed, the sound infuriatingly close to amusement. “He breathes recklessness. I’ve tried to give him grammar; he insists on poetry.”
Snape laughed once, harsh. “Poetry? Half-scrawled. Waiting to trip into a ditch.”
“Mm. And yet you are here, furious, which suggests he matters to you more than half the faculty combined.”
Snape’s teeth ground. He paced, boots striking like punctuation. “He matters because he *will* kill himself, and you let him. Do you teach recklessness now, Brian? Do you assign it as homework?”
“I do not assign it. I observe it. And sometimes I redirect it.”
“Redirect—” Snape whirled, robes slashing air. “Redirect him into what, martyrdom? Shall we applaud his talent for self-destruction?”
“You seem very invested.”
Snape stopped dead, eyes narrowing. “Do not twist this into some psychodrama. I am invested because he is Lily’s, because he refuses to learn, because every time I look at him I see—my late friend... ” He choked, then bit the words off, spitting them into silence.
The stillness that followed was worse than any reply. Dumbledore’s gaze was patient, open, intolerable.
Snape turned away briskly. “Draco sharpened a blade under my nose at Slughorn’s ridiculous party. He followed Potter after, muttering murder like it was a hymn. Do you hear me? One boy reckless, the other rabid. And you sit there winding clocks.”
“You should *do* something.”
“Punish Potter. Curb him. Chain him to his desk if you must.”
“I am not his parent, Severus. I have no wish to nanny the boy.”
Snape snapped his head around, eyes blazing. “I didn’t call you his parent.”
Dumbledore’s tone was infuriatingly smooth. “No? Then you have forgotten your own disgust, years ago, when I suggested adoption. When Lily was gone. You almost vomited all over the office. ”
Snape’s fists clenched on the desk’s edge. “I am not asking you to *raise* him. I am asking you to restrain him.”
“And I repeat—I will not. His recklessness is his compass. If I broke it, he would lose more than you imagine.”
Snape let out a sharp breath, near laughter. “Compass? The boy could not navigate a corridor.”
“And Draco?” Dumbledore asked softly.
The name hit like a slap. Snape’s face twisted. “Draco is obsessed with Potter. He watches him across rooms, across classes. He cannot tell if he wants to kiss him or kill him, and it distracts him from the task. Do you even know what task I speak of? Or have you folded that into one of your tidy secrets?”
Dumbledore’s eyes glimmered—too calm, too knowing.
Snape slammed his palm flat on the table. “You don’t trust me.”
The words hung like smoke. He almost hated himself for saying them, because they sounded like pout, like the sulk of a boy spurned. But they were true, raw and ugly.
Dumbledore’s stillness deepened. Then their hand moved—only a fraction, fingertips brushing Snape’s wrist. A whisper of touch.
“I trust you more than anyone alive,” they said. “But yes, I keep things. Not to belittle you. To spare you. Some truths are poisons. To hand them to you would not be trust. It would be cruelty.”
Snape yanked his hand back as if burned, though the heat was his own. His lip curled. “Always so righteous. You make betrayal sound like charity.”
“Would you like me to be angry instead?” Dumbledore asked. Calm.
“You know Draco is trying to kill me, don’t you?” Dumbledore’s voice was still level, almost gentle.
Snape’s lip curled slightly. “Yes. That is the idea.”
“Well,” Dumbledore tilted their head, “do you want me to give you tips on how to make him succeed?”
For a moment, silence—and then both of them laughed, sharp, bitter, absurd. Laughter on the edge of collapse.
Snape pressed a hand over his eyes, shoulders shaking. “You confuse me.”
Their gazes caught, and for a sliver of a heartbeat the office was stripped bare: no pupils, no tasks, no masks. Just two figures, jagged and weary, orbiting each other.
Snape smirked, his mouth twisted with exhaustion. “Your lover boy will drive me to madness.”
“Well, I can't make him any less distracting", they smiled.
dededos
turnnoffyourmind
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
