Chapter Text
Severus Snape stared down his aquiline nose at the rows of students chattering away in the Great Hall during morning breakfast. He wrinkled his nose in slight disdain at the thought that he was to spend yet another year of his life attempting to teach dunderheads potions and stopping them from accidentally blowing themselves up.
The war was over, and those who had survived were trying to piece their lives back together. McGonagall as the new headmistress had insisted school continue as usual to give the students some sense of normalcy. Severus had sidestepped the role of headmaster once Voldemort was defeated. Despite being hailed as a war hero and awarded the Order of Merlin First Class, the circumstances of his tenure as headmaster had been less than favourable and he was sure he had been the most unpopular headmaster in the history of Hogwarts.
He had tried to look for opportunities outside Hogwarts and whilst many apothecaries and commercial firms were happy to offer him a tidy sum to consult, no one had dared to actually hire him for an actual position. It seemed the years cultivating his image as the great greasy bat of the dungeons who tormented his students had come back to bite him. Minerva had graciously offered him his old position of teaching Potions and with nothing else lined up he decided to accept and go back to being the terrifying bat of the dungeons. All was back to normal it seemed.
Pausing briefly outside the door of the first years potions classroom, Snape took a deep breath and then flung open the door for dramatic effect before swooping through the dungeons in the very likeness of his namesake (the bat) and giving the same speech as he had given to every first year class at the start of the year.
“There will be no foolish wand waving or silly incantations in this class……” He started as he eyed his students to see their reactions. Mostly they seemed to be terrified of him. Good, he thought to himself. Hopefully they would be scared enough to actually follow instructions and not melt any cauldrons today.
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Severus sat down on the sofa in his personal chambers and poured himself a large serving of firewhiskey and downed it at one go. It had been a most trying first day back.
After spending the summer convalescing in the Hospital Wing recovering from the snake bite, he was now doomed to an eternity of teaching dunderheads, he thought gloomily to himself. The Golden Trio were back to finish their final year, and at Minerva’s insistence, he had to take Longbottom back into his NEWTs level potions class as the boy wished to be an auror and needed to take potions at a NEWT level. For all his newfound courage during the war and killing that thrice cursed horcrux of a snake, Longbottom’s aptitude in potions had not improved one bit and had melted three cauldrons in one single lesson. This along with a junior Longbottom-wannabe in the first year who had succeeded in exploding his cauldron and sending himself and his lab partner to the Hospital Wing by adding ground wormwood instead of sliced and at the wrong stage of the brewing of the invigorating draught.
Snape almost wished he was dead instead of enduring this torture. He cursed the boy who lived, and lived and still lived and apparently, had the propensity for ensuring the same fate for others. It was Potter who came back for him just as he was dying and at Granger’s direction, had poured some phoenix tears they had acquired from Fawkes into his wound to counteract the venom. Damn the boy, and his know-it-all sidekick. He was now indebted to two of his most annoying students and condemned to face exploding and melting cauldrons for the foreseeable future. He sighed. Perhaps this was his punishment for all his misdeeds in the past. Though at the very least Potter had drastically improved at potions after (ironically) studying his old textbook and Granger, well she knew almost too much, enough to thwart Voldermort’s plans for his imminent death. and keep him in the classroom to answer her incessant questions for the rest of the year.
Most of all he was bored, bored of repeating the same lectures over and over again, and trying to save dunderheads from blowing themselves up. For the first time in his adult life, he was a free man, and not forced to serve any master unwillingly either out of his own youthful stupidity or to atone for his sins - and it was an odd feeling. He felt almost bereft. He missed the feeling of servitude though he did not miss the mortal peril and torture serving either Albus or Voldemort entailed. Oh he still wanted to serve, but in a way that was far more enjoyable and on his own terms. Voluntary servitude as he'd like to call it.
Slightly inebriated at this point, Snape smiled to himself as an excellent idea came to mind. Picking up a quill and a bit of parchment he quickly scrawled out an ad and attached it to the leg of his eagle owl and sent it off.
The next day in the shadier back pages of the evening prophet was a small ad in the personals section : Experienced male submissive seeking a dominant to serve, worship and obey. Interested parties please reply at Owl Post Box number 1135.