"My point," Severus repeats, "is that someone needs to hold the post, and he's the only viable option." He shakes his head. "No, I don't mean to say that, but, well, there are two barriers. First, the sort of mind that can embrace the scope of the Art with enough depth and breadth to acquire true mastery is more often then not a renaissance mind, and is therefore easily seduced away by other subjects with more personable professors, or an obsessive mind which often has other obsessions; the student I would most happily have sponsored most recently is more likely to wander off on safari looking for cumple-horned nargles to photograph than to tie herself to a lab for years. Secondly, to enter into mastery needs an apprentice-master. I certainly never had time for an apprentice while at school, and networking is far from being my forte."
Severus makes a face. "May it never be tested."
"It was a personal relief," he says quietly, "but his was not the only death that day; there was no time for happiness." Let Rus think he's talking about Voldemort--and, really, at the time the man had been a man, and a compelling and a nearly sane one (and if you play with the Blacks and object to insanity, really you ought to take your toys and go home), and at that time Severus had, while set to oppose him and his dreadful tactics (so easy to blame on politics and the bloody groupthink of his supporters), felt little of the personal enmity that had come later. He makes a wry little face, wan. "Well, I wouldn't say that. They certainly didn't target them in the same way, but whatever your gender it was advisable to be well able to take care of yourself if you were going to cross them."
"Suspicions build from the thinnest of shadows," Severus points out back, amused and unruffled.
No, it sounds right, but it is hard to keep track of the climaxes of a screwball comedy. n,n I can't help but think any story which thinks in black and white is silly. Nope! :D