Why is he blushing, and who is he protecting? That's for you to decide 🤭
Fun (and not so fun) facts about him under the cut!
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ Minsu wholeheartedly believes he is a monster. The primary reason he is so afraid of people and social interaction is that he doesn’t want to get close to someone and hurt them as his father did
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ Is it winter? Don’t waste your resources; he’s your personal fireplace/heater
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ Since he can’t express his emotions very well with words, he instead writes stories. It’s his favorite pastime, and if you can’t find him (and you know he isn’t hiding from others), he’s likely scribbling away
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ The reason why he has fewer scars than his older twin Minjae is because, during the attack from their werewolf father, Minjae stepped in the way to protect the younger twin, taking the brunt of the assault. Minsu blames himself for Minjae’s injuries, wishing he had stepped up instead of cowering back
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ When alert or angry, his pupils constrict, he gets jumpy, and he prepares to pounce. Gone is the composed exterior of his. When particularly furious, his eyes emit a green eye shine
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ His love language is spending time with the person he likes in silence. When he gets closer to someone, he shows them his hiding places in the forest
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ Don't ask him specifics about what he's writing, or he'll yap more than he has the entire month
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ His poker face is the one thing saving his reputation, because he can be very pathetic when interacting with others. Sometimes, he'd either walk away or mumble unintelligibly (before internally cussing himself out for it) because he didn't know what to do or say. Instead, it comes off as though he's annoyed with or dislikes the person in front of him
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ He adores running in the forest. If he invites you to one of his midnight runs, you've won
૮・ﻌ・ა• ⁃ Minjae is one of the closest people to Minsu and is the one person he never avoids. His brother could talk his ear off, and Minsu would just sit there attentively
If you've read this far, Minsu's giving you many hugs :D
Since the drawings are pretty small, let me know if I should make a separate post with the zoomed-in drawings
(Divider found on Pinterest, but I don't know who made it. DM me if you know so I can give proper credit)
Sorry Fred and George, your older brother is getting posted about on your birthday
I GOT ANOTHER COMM FROM THE AMAZING @substellaris AND IT’S PERCTORIA AND I’M GOING TO SCREAM
Work was… exhausting tonight but seeing this DM and the finished piece made it a whole lot better. The king and queen of making out while on the job, everyone.
Summary: After Hagrid’s revelation, Minerva is determined to uncover the truth about Severus Snape’s mysterious lover.
A/N: You don’t need to read Part 1—unless you’re up for another good time haha
Dedicated to @yaboyguzma69
part I & part II / spaicy bonus
In case you were wondering what happened to Hagrid’s creature from part one: no worries — it was found in the Slytherin common room. Poor man was heartbroken over how they treated his Moony…
Content/W: Dramaaaa, Humor, Tension, Significant Age Gap, Power Dynamics, Mild Mention of Barrier Methods, Emotional Vulnerability.
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Ever since Hagrid had whispered that absurd confession —a woman, in Severus Snape’s bed, asleep— Minerva McGonagall hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it.
During breakfast, she pretended to read the Prophet, but the words slipped right through her mind. The rumor had settled squarely between her brows with uncomfortable persistence —somewhere between disbelief and... a hint of guilty curiosity.
Snape, with someone.
Snape, allowing closeness.
Snape, in intimacy.
The idea wasn’t just improbable. It was disconcerting.
She knew she wouldn’t get answers with a direct question. He would deny everything, withdrawn as ever.
So she turned to her other resource: patience.
Over the following days, McGonagall began watching more closely. Sometimes as a colleague, sometimes as a feline. Her Animagus form allowed her to slip through corners and corridors unseen, without raising suspicion.
She didn’t follow him constantly. Only when her intuition called for it —as if something inside her knew when he was hiding something. There were moments —brief, surgical— in which Severus disappeared without explanation. He left his classes with impeccable punctuality, but then delayed his return. Or came back from corridors that didn’t connect to his usual routes. He didn’t talk to anyone more than usual. No visible changes. But there were absences. Interstices. Silences.
As if he knew he was being followed. As if he were daring her to catch him.
McGonagall was no novice. But Severus was a master of evasion. Sometimes she lost his trail with such ease it felt insulting. On one occasion, she waited for him at the bottom of the east wing stairs —she knew he had gone up— and yet, she never saw him come down. He vanished.
She watched him, and still couldn’t reach him. There wasn’t a single gesture out of place. No trace of foreign perfume on his robes. Not a word, not a glance. Snape moved as always. Rigid, acerbic, and composed.
It was maddening.
She couldn’t bear it anymore. Giving in to her unease, she decided to confront him directly —though without abandoning propriety. The time had come to inspect his quarters. She could no longer delay the inevitable; she had to find out the truth, one way or another.
That same evening, she knocked firmly on the Potions Master’s door, which he opened without delay.
“Minerva?” Snape’s voice sounded as surprised as it did irritated. He wore his usual black robe, though slightly disheveled. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“I don’t intend to inconvenience you, Severus,” she began calmly. “But I find myself obliged to conduct a review of your quarters. Protocol.”
He didn’t respond immediately. He only tilted his head slightly.
“Protocol? Is there a formal complaint?”
“Not exactly. But when certain observations come from a member of staff, the Heads of House are expected to ensure decorum is upheld. Especially regarding... nighttime visits.”
A muscle in Snape’s cheek twitched.
“I’ve had no such visitors.”
A tense silence fell between them. “Then there should be no issue,” Minerva said, stepping in with firm resolve, not waiting for permission.
Snape followed her with his eyes, irritated, with an almost ironic resignation.
Minerva began to examine the room calmly, her eyes sweeping over every surface with clinical precision. She opened the wardrobe (robes perfectly aligned, of course), the bedside table (wands, ink, a couple of battered books), looked under the bed (no sign of foreign lingerie or feminine shoes). The room smelled of sage and something deeper —incense, perhaps.
Everything appeared to be in order… until, on a high shelf, between an alembic and a jar of dried leaves, her gaze stopped on an opaque, glazed ceramic container. It had no label, but seemed placed there with some intent.
“And this?” she asked, frowning.
“A jar,” he replied dryly.
She picked it up with both hands, opened it carefully… and inside, arranged with suspicious meticulousness, were small, elongated silver packets, wrapped in a shiny material. She pulled one out delicately, examining it between her fingers as if it were an unusual rune.
“Curious design. What exactly are these?” she asked. It seemed familiar—something she had vaguely seen before, though she couldn’t quite place when.
Severus paled, then blushed, then paled again.
“Muggle artefacts,” he replied, jaw tight.
“And how are they used?”
He blinked, as if he hadn’t expected the question. Cleared his throat.
“They’re not... not commonly used. At least not in our context. They serve... practical purposes.”
“Practical how?” she pressed, stepping a little closer to the light to examine one.
“Minerva, please,” he said, his voice edging into a plea.
“Come now, Severus. You said it’s Muggle. Does it explode? Inflate? Is it edible?”
“For Merlin’s sake, Minerva!” he exclaimed, equal parts horrified and exasperated. “They’re private. For personal use.”
She blinked. Then looked at him. Then at the jar.
“Oh...” she finally said, bringing a hand to her lips in a gesture of modesty and confusion. “I see.”
A moment of absolute silence. Then, with unshakable dignity, Minerva returned the small packet to the jar and replaced the lid as if nothing had happened.
“I doubt that very much,” he muttered, setting the jar back in its place with unnecessary precision.
Minerva exhaled slowly, defeated by a resignation that went beyond embarrassment. To her, Snape wasn’t just a colleague. She had watched him grow, mature, transform —through hardship— into the man before her. She cared for him with an almost maternal devotion, though she sometimes struggled to admit it, even to herself. And this situation… deeply unsettled her. She needed to know the truth. She couldn’t just imagine —with all the darkness that implied— that he would dare bring strangers into the castle. Or worse… become involved with a student.
“Severus,” she said, softening her voice. “I’m no longer your professor. But I am your colleague. And your friend, though you go to great lengths to pretend otherwise.”
He looked at her warily, saying nothing.
“Aren’t you going to tell me who’s sharing your nights?”
“I’m not sharing—” he began in his usual defensive tone, but Minerva stopped him with a raised eyebrow.
“Please. I’m well above hallway gossip, but when Hagrid blushes while talking about a beautiful woman sleeping soundly in your bed, I can’t simply look the other way. And you,” she added, pointing at him lightly with a finger, “with the emotional subtlety of a rock, don’t hide it nearly as well as you think. Something’s going on. Who is it?” she concluded, her tone inquisitive.
Severus huffed, not responding, his gaze shifting away.
“Severus…” Minerva insisted, now more serious. “You can’t have strangers here. The rules are clear: no visitors unrelated to staff, and no... ladies of the night. This is a school, not a brothel.”
“For Dumbledore’s beard, Minerva!” he protested, unable to mask his shame. “I haven’t brought prostitutes into Hogwarts.”
“I don’t mean it like that. But I do need to know if it’s someone from within the castle. For discretion, for safety, and because you’re a Head of House, Severus. You must set an example.”
Silence followed. Long and heavy. For a moment, she thought he might say it. That he would let it slip. His gaze softened slightly. He looked down. Opened his mouth… but said nothing.
The confession broke in his throat before it was born. A slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, barely perceptible, betrayed him. Minerva knew him too well. She knew when he was silent out of stubbornness… and when it was to protect someone.
She drew in a deep breath, folding her arms with practiced patience.
“I’m not here to judge you, Severus. But if it’s someone who works within these walls, I need to know. Not because I care about your private life —believe me, I wish I didn’t have to interfere…”
Minerva took a step forward. Then another. No longer as a colleague, but as a woman who had seen too much, and who still carried that motherly instinct for those who had once been her students.
“Is it someone I should be worried about?” she asked, her voice now soft. “Someone with power over you? Or is it you who holds power over her?”
The question shook him—too accurate. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if the thought hurt him.
“It’s not what you think,” he said at last, his voice lower than before, almost a whisper. “It’s not a fling. She’s not a student. I don’t have time for that. And even less... the will to expose myself like that.”
Minerva’s expression softened, relieved for what it wasn’t.
“Then... who?”
He held her gaze. Long, intense, as if searching in her eyes for a way to avoid the answer. Words that would have come to him with surgical precision in any other situation now eluded him. Something held him back. Something overwhelmed him.
Without a word, Severus walked to his desk. He opened a drawer with deliberate, almost mechanical movements. He rummaged through it, and after a few seconds, took out a sheet of parchment, folded several times.
He handed it to her silently, not looking at her, as if its contents could speak in his stead.
Minerva unfolded it carefully. It wasn’t a letter. It was a drawing.
A portrait, inked, with precise lines brimming with emotion. A woman, in profile, asleep. The linework captured something intimate and serene. A face she recognized. She was neither a professor at the school. Nor a student. None of that.
But Severus had drawn her with unbearable tenderness.
Minerva looked up. He was watching her in silence, with a mixture of defiance and vulnerability she hadn’t seen since he was sixteen. Her fingers still held the drawing, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
“Her?” —she whispered, narrowing her eyes.
She knew that face. From training meetings, in the hallways where young staff moved about. One of the new faces roaming the castle with youthful enthusiasm.
“Is that… Y/N?” —she asked at last, though she already knew the answer.
He didn’t nod, but neither did he deny it. A blink, a held breath, a glance that strayed for just a second—more than enough confirmation.
Minerva raised a hand to her forehead.
“By Morgana... She’s barely a trainee, Severus. She’s been here three months. She’s under my direct supervision.”
“I know,” he said, and the way he said it—with no shield at all—was what unsettled her most.
“Since when?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters!” she snapped, arms crossed. “She’s not a student, but she’s not your colleague either! She’s twenty-five and still learning how to control a classroom without being steamrolled by third years. For Merlin’s sake, Severus, she’s still in training!”
“And I haven’t taken advantage of that,” he replied calmly, though through gritted teeth. “She’s no innocent, Minerva. She has more fire than you imagine. I didn’t pursue her. I didn’t coerce her. If you think I preyed on her position, you’re wrong.”
“What I believe is irrelevant,” Minerva said, her voice just barely cracking. “What others will perceive, that’s what matters. What if someone else finds out? What if she doesn’t know what she’s doing? Or worse—thinks she does, and regrets it later?”
Snape stepped closer, in that measured way he had when the storm raged inside his chest, not his voice.
“I’m not foolish enough to think this is simple. But this is not a fling, Minerva. Nor a whim. It's something more solid than that ”
“more solid?” she repeated, skeptically. “I can't believe this” Her distress was plain on her face.
“I’ve spoken with her more than I’ve spoken to anyone in years. She listens to me. She contradicts me. She looks at me like I’m not the sum of all the history you and the others can’t forget.”
Minerva closed her eyes for a moment. She felt the vertigo of that truth. He had always been a solitary, sharp-edged figure. And yet, here he was. Vulnerable. For someone so young, so removed from his world…
“Does she know what this means?” she asked at last, her tone gentler. “What you might be dragging her into?”
“She knows enough. And still… she stays.”
Minerva drew a deep breath, battling discomfort, concern, and that other feeling she didn’t want to name: a sting of protective jealousy, like a favorite student had been taken from her.
“I can’t stop it,” she said finally. “But as her mentor, I warn you: if this interferes with her development, if it tarnishes her reputation, if I see even the slightest change in her performance—I will intervene. Hogwarts is not a playground for poorly managed affections, Severus.”
“It’s not a game,” he replied quietly.
She looked at him for a long moment, with a mixture of sorrow and forced acceptance.
“Then it had better be worth it.”
And without another word, she left the room, her cloak billowing behind her like a half-made decision. Inside, something cracked. It wasn’t quite anger. Nor pure sorrow. It was, perhaps, the painful recognition that Severus Snape—her most inaccessible, most guarded, most wounded colleague—had found something precious... and heartbreakingly fragile.
