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Despite the dread and melancholy and intermittent thoughts of suicide that dogged his steps as he trudged towards Hallowe’en, Severus's primary emotion when the night finally came was annoyance that a working wireless could not be had in all the castle.
He had no desire to listen to commemorative speeches or retrospectives. Bad enough that the headmaster had arranged a Halloween Ball that Severus had barely escaped chaperoning. Now he was prevented from being the least bit vigilant where it actually mattered. This was not truly the anniversary of a victory. It was the anniversary of the Dark Lord's survival, and if the Dark Lord intended to return in grand fashion, or if one of his former followers decided to light up the world in reminder of what had passed, Severus would have to rely on hearing it second-hand from Dumbledore.
The Great Hall was a dull roar of foolish jubilation that echoed inescapably through the castle and inside Severus’s skull. He considered burying himself in his rooms for the night, but he had no wish to be easily found by the headmaster in anything but an emergency. He went by Kettleburn’s apartments instead and knocked quietly on the door. No one answered, and there was no sound of stirring inside. That ought to have been that, but his brain hesitated, at a loss, and in the interim his feet took the initiative and he found himself going up to check Kettleburn's office.
A light shone from under the door. When he quietly approached and listened closely, Severus could hear the scratch of a quill and the shuffle of paper. He raised his hand to knock. Then he paused, wondering what sort of company he would be tonight. The noise inside quieted for an instant, and then came the sound of Kettleburn getting to his feet and approaching the door.
Severus elected to still be there when it opened.
Kettleburn peered out in suspicion before he saw who it was and smiled broadly. “Have you come to invite me to the dance?"
Severus glared at him.
The expression on Kettleburn's face grew sober. "You look dreadful," he said, pulling open the door and beckoning Severus inside. "Come in and tell Auntie Silvanus all about it.”
The door was closed and locked, and the din from the Great Hall was blotted out. Severus leaned against the wall, rubbing his eyes.
Kettleburn regarded him closely. “I suppose you can’t come out for a drink. Really, what did you let them make you Head of House for?”
“I couldn’t say,” Severus said wearily, although the truth was that there simply wasn’t anyone else.
“What do you suppose our chances are of being able to get to my rooms without detection?”
“I’m not—" Severus said, feeling presumptuous and ridiculous for assuming Kettleburn meant sex and queer for refusing it.
“I suppose we ought to play it safe,” Kettleburn said smoothly, as if he had not proposed anything and Severus had not refused it. “I have fortifications enough to last a week, if you don’t mind tea and biscuits.”
The sofa in the corner was cleared off, books and paper stacked on the floor. Severus sat down heavily and watched Kettleburn fiddle with a phonograph player. A moment later, the scratchy sound of old-fashioned music―some sort of jazz―drifted softly through the room.
“Tea?” A kettle was procured from under the desk.
Severus shrugged in ambivalent agreement as a pot was brewed and the lights were turned down.
Kettleburn joined him a few minutes later, pressing a cup into his hands. Mouse jumped onto the sofa and turned around several times before settling down between them, her stubby tail wagging. Severus waited for further prying―some jab, like he had been receiving all day―about how he could look so unhappy on such a joyous occasion. None came, however, and they merely drank in silence for several minutes, listening to the music. A woman was singing in a low, creaky voice. The tone was soothing, but something about the melody struck Severus’s ear as compellingly tilted.
When he had finished his tea, Kettleburn took one of his medicinal cigarettes and sparked it off the end of his wand. The red-orange glow lit up his lean features rather handsomely. Severus stole a few sideways glances, trying to think of Lily, but found he could not recapture the raw, aching grief of a year ago. Instead, there was only a vaguely nauseating sense of guilt weighing down his stomach. It was not an improvement.
“Here.” Kettleburn took a long drag from the cigarette before passing it over.
Severus put his lips to the damp tip and inhaled, letting the smoke swirl around in his mouth before he swallowed it down. The crup sneezed and hopped down from the sofa.
"I put a spell on you..." the woman on the record sang mournfully.
Severus cast his gaze around the room, lingering on shadowy pictures of prowling leopards before falling on the chart next to the window. Homo sapiens sapiens. Homo sapiens magi. “What is that, anyhow?"
Kettleburn took the cigarette back from him and took another drag, then flicked the ash into his empty teacup. "That? A thought experiment."
"What sort of thought experiment?" It usually bothered Severus to suspect that someone he was conversing with was cleverer than he was, but in Kettleburn's case, it was oddly appealing. His was a very Ravenclaw sort of intelligence, more curiosity than cunning, channelled into cryptic crossword puzzles on the bedside table and meandering jaunts of research.
"Muggles vs. wizards. A death match, if you will." Kettleburn paused, considering. “I suppose that's in poor taste, given the date. A face-off, then. That’s a sporting thing, yes?”
Severus had stiffened, certain for an instant that the eyes of a large painted leopard were cut out and that Dumbledore was surely watching him from the other side. He cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon?"
Something must have slipped in his tone, because Kettleburn laughed lightly, reassuringly. "Oh, not like that. I am an anti-secretist, as it happens, but when it comes to the long-term survival of either species, I have a dog in both fights. I'm a halfblood, so I'm allowed to be flippant, and all the younger generations in my family who are carrying our shared genes into the future are of the Muggle variety. Provided the world's end times come after my own, I have no bias."
"For God's sake, you can’t just tell me you’re an anti-secretist," Severus said, half exasperated at the man's lack of discretion and half paranoid that this was some sort of setup. "Even if you are, I don't want to hear it."
The cigarette was passed back to him. "Don't be ridiculous. Being an anti-secretist no more makes one a Death Eater than supporting a reunited Ireland makes one a member of the IRA. I abhor violence and thoroughly condemn acts of terrorism. That doesn't mean I don't think we haven't shot ourselves in the foot by clinging to outmoded social institutions and living in Muggle shadows like some sort of parasite species. It was an acceptable method of survival during plague-times, but now look at us. Staid and outdated and at risk of being left behind in an increasingly small world."
Severus shifted uncomfortably and hoarded the cigarette for a full three puffs. "And the chart?" he eventually asked.
"I imagine a scenario. A large meteor approaching earth. Atomic war. A pandemic. I set the parameters. Then I judge which sub-species would be most likely to survive it."
Severus frowned. "We aren't separate species. The definition of separate species is that they cannot produce viable offspring. I'm given to understand that half-bloods are not sterile."
"Sub-species, darling. We can procreate with giants and goblins as well, after all. We're all members of the homo genus, descended down surprisingly close lines, and I would say we ourselves are still on the cusp of distinctiveness, if two wizards can produce what is nearly a Muggle. But give us ten thousand more years of close breeding and we may well branch off entirely as our own distant ancestors did from their cousins. Certainly, a sufficiently dramatic external disaster might force the matter, and hence my little thought experiment."
Severus's frown deepened. Of all the rhetoric he had heard in his life, this had never featured. If anything, his former friends were of the opinion that wizards pre-dated Muggles, and that the entire Muggle population were descended from Squibs and numerous because of the lack of restraint and increased fertility attributed to such creatures. “Are you suggesting that wizards are the next stage of human evolution?”
Kettleburn tutted. “Of course not. Evolution isn’t conscious―it has no goal in mind. Magic is an adaptive trait, just like creative intelligence. Only time will tell whether it proves more suited to the environment or desirable in the sphere of sexual selection to the extent where the majority of the surviving human race possess it.”
"That's...spurious," Severus declared. “We have intelligence. We have intelligence and magic. Ergo, we are superior.”
“Do we?" Kettleburn asked. "Certainly we have sapience. But I wonder about the rest. Who’s your favourite author? Your favourite artist? Musician?”
Severus hesitated.
Kettleburn laughed gently and patted him on the arm, using the opportunity to steal the cigarette back. “You’ve just outed yourself as half-blood or a Muggleborn, you realise. You’d only say Celestina Warbeck or Schwartz if you’d had no exposure to Muggle art at a formative age. But once someone has heard Beethoven, or the Beatles, or Mistress Simone here, they cannot in good conscience claim that we can make art. Our art is terrible. We have no inspired fiction, no paintings that live beyond animation spells, no music that can move anyone half-discerning to tears. We have sapience, but we do not have creativity.”
“You’ve said evolution is about survival, not worthiness,” Severus retorted.
“Quite true, quite true. You’ve diverted me. I meant to say, we can make war all we like, Muggles and wizards, but there will not be a tipping point until the ability of one species to survive to the age of procreation tips, either by a change in genetic fitness or the environment.”
“What sort of changes are we discussing?”
“Oh..." Kettleburn waved his hand vaguely. "On the genetic level, a dramatic decrease in diversity or an increase in the propagation of faulty genes. They have us on that one, barring a drastic rise in juvenile cancers or environmentally induced infertility. We keep too much to ourselves. We stay cloistered, and we inbreed. That leaves us vulnerable in terms of disease, even though we do have far more effective ways of isolating communicative elements and preventing contamination. We usually win when it comes to environmental destruction, however. We’d be much more likely to be able to survive if the atmosphere grew inhospitable due to pollution or radiation, and we can make do with much fewer natural resources. Of course, the enjoyable part is that the game changes every time Muggle technology advances. You just never know what they’re going to invent next.”
"You make it sound..."
Kettleburn looked at him in mild expectation.
"I don't know," Severus said, giving up. "Perilous. Pointless."
Those were not the words he wanted, but there was nothing in his lexicon to describe how he felt when he closed his eyes and sank into the sofa, down and down as if it were melting beneath him, and all the world around him large and arbitrary and crawling with a trillion, a quadrillion, an uncountable number of living things, and time unimaginably stretching out beyond the last year, beyond his lifetime, and his own birth and sorry actions somehow, against all reason, not standing at the exact centre of history and space.
"We're specks," Kettleburn declared before drawing in the last bit of smoke in a sharp inhalation. He chuckled to himself. "Fascinating, fantastic, and very handsome specks, but specks nonetheless. Would you like a biscuit?"
They put away a pack of bourbon creams between them and listened to the record until it ended. The crup rejoined them, licking crumbs from Severus's fingers, and Kettleburn sang softly under his breath about someone called Minnie the Moocher. In time, the bells rang downstairs as the ball let out, and Severus supposed he was due to usher his students back to their dormitories so that none of them put the heredity of magic into practice.
He heaved himself to his feet and brushed the rest of the crumbs off his robes before casting a vaporizing charm to dissipate any lingering smell of smoke. Kettleburn reclined into the vacated space on the sofa, crumpled gracelessly and smiling up at him with what seemed like stupid fondness.
"Goodnight, Severus," Kettleburn said. "I'm glad you came by."
Severus mustered a faint smile, slightly unsteady on his feet and still adrift insignificantly in the universe. “Goodnight, Silvanus.”