— From the moment you joined the Hogwarts staff, Severus made his disdain unmistakable. You had expected a professional kind of distance—he wasn’t known for warmth, after all—but what you got from him was colder, sharper. It was as though he’d made up his mind about you before you even shook his hand. Or tried to. He hadn’t taken it.

At first, you told yourself he was simply difficult with everyone, but the way he avoided your gaze, the way his tone turned clipped and sour only when addressing you—or worse, when pointedly not addressing you—made it painfully clear. Staff meetings were the worst. He would never look your way, never speak directly to you unless he had no choice, and when he did, his words were mechanical, tight, as if just forming syllables around your name cost him something.

What hurt more was the unfairness. You saw how he interacted with others—stern, yes, but not like this. With you, it was another level. He once deducted points from your House over something your student didn’t even do. Another time, he dismissed your contribution in a meeting with a single, disdainful arch of his brow, as if the air grew stale when you opened your mouth.

You didn’t understand it until you overheard a conversation—Hooch whispering to Sprout, unaware you’d entered the corridor behind them. “She reminds him of Lily. Poor thing never stood a chance.”

And suddenly, everything fell into place. The resemblance, the kindness in your manner, even the way you carried yourself—it echoed someone else, someone he’d buried in guilt and grief. You weren’t you to him. You were a ghost he never asked to see again.

And no matter how hard you tried to show you weren’t her, he never gave you the chance.