AN: This is a one-shot about events alluded to but not explained in Harry Potter, Age 10. This takes place during Snape's first year of teaching, when he is even rougher around the edges than he is when Harry gets there. It is meant to be a bit funny and a bit touching, and to show how Albus begins the transformation of Snape's character that Harry gets to be a part of later on.

This is dedicated to Mandancie and was written by her request. She has been a very encouraging voice to me since I first started publishing fanfiction. It can take a lot of courage to make your work available to the public, and to have people like Mandancie and several others (you know who you are!) who have been loyal and encouraging readers has meant the world to me. Thank you.

The Performance Review

"Come in, my boy," Albus welcomed the young professor. "Come in. Would you like some tea?"

"Thank you," Snape acknowledged with a nod of his head. He sat down stiffly, unsure. When he had found out that Dumbledore wanted to give him a performance review mid-year, he was unsure. He knew that all of the other professors had their review at the end of the year, but then again this was his first year teaching. The gangly professor viewed the Headmaster with suspicion.

"So, it seems that we need to do a mid-year review," Dumbledore told him as Severus accepted his tea. "This is not unusual for new professors, however. What is unusual is the number of complaints that I have fielded about you."

"Indeed?" Snape replied, his voice remaining calm. If he could stay calm with Voldemort, he could stay calm with Dumbledore. But for some reason his stomach twisted strangely, was he actually worried about disappointing the old coot?

"Indeed," Dumbledore replied. "It appears that there are multiple complaints about you insulting students, assigning detentions at the slightest provocation, you favoring those students in Slytherin, and actually refusing to teach students that had not done their reading."

"That sounds about right," Snape agreed.

"And then the complaints get interesting. Is it true that you actually used a sticking spell to stick a stirrer to a third year's hand that dropped it in class?"

"She never dropped it again, Headmaster."

"Yes, but for three days?"

"She never dropped it again," Snape repeated smoothly.

"And did you actually force a student to drink their potion that was supposed to be for removing boils but had actually turned black and was emitting a foul odor?"

"Again, it was a just response to their ineptitude," Snape replied. "He did not die from it."

"No, but he was in the infirmary for three days."

"Likely just a result of malingering."

"I have another complaint that you actually transformed a young Gryffindor into a goat when they couldn't name where a bezoar came from."

"That was only for the class," Snape protested. "I restored Miss Wood before class was over. And nobody who saw it will ever forget where a bezoar comes from."

"And you have verbally insulted Professor Trelawney at dinner in front of students."

"Come now," Snape answered. "I'm not sure how you take her seriously, Headmaster."

"And I have fourteen separate reports of you hitting children on the back of their heads and twenty-seven reports of you being suspected of sending stinging hexes at their posteriors."

"I believe there should be order in the classroom," Snape answered.

"Yes, well, you have overstepped, Professor Snape, and I'm afraid that I must discipline you for it."

"Discipline?" Snape asked, his eyes narrowing.

"Yes, yes," Dumbledore answered, his face serious. "I am going to give you the choice that I give all young professors, and in fact was the choice that my headmaster gave me when I was a young professor. You can either take an official reprimand or a more traditional one; namely, the strap."

"The strap?" Snape echoed blankly.

Well, at least I was able to surprise the man, Dumbledore thought with a certain amount of glee. That was something he was rarely able to do. "Yes, the strap. It was a traditional way to discipline young professors. I would never use more than a ruler on a student, although I might make an exception for an older student who clearly deserved it. For young professors, the strap suffices."

"Headmaster, you cannot be serious."

"But I am, Severus. The official discipline includes a week's suspension without pay as well as an official warning, one which states that further infractions will result in your termination. Should you choose this route, it will be effective immediately."

"How many with the strap?" Snape asked, calculating. He could take pain, he had endured the Cruciatus from Voldemort, surely a few whacks with a strap could hardly compare.

"Twenty," Dumbledore replied. "Over your trousers."

Snape sipped his tea and considered. The strap would certainly be over quickly and not interfere with his life, as well as not alert his students and fellow faculty members that he was being reprimanded. It would just be between him and the Headmaster. And there was another piece of it that echoed strangely in his chest as well as squeezed his stomach. He didn't like to admit how much he looked up to the Headmaster, and looked to him almost as a father. This brought up bad memories of his real father.

"Severus," the Headmaster's voice softly addressed him. "I know what your father did to you, and I know that this might scare you. But do you trust me to punish you? I promise it will be nothing like what your father did."

Snape wanted to believe him, and he looked at the Headmaster with eyes that were for once not cloaked in cold disdain, but instead hungry and raw. Could he trust the Headmaster? Even to punish him?

"Will it hurt me?" he asked, his voice young and raw. Snape's face flushed in embarrassment at having asked it.

"It will hurt a bit," Dumbledore admitted, his soft blue eyes on the young man. "That would be the point of it. But I promise that you will not be damaged, and that I will not be out of control. This is not what your father did, lashing out indiscriminately towards you and not caring what happened. This is a measured, considered punishment given by a person that is in authority over you. It is a response and a reminder to help you become a better person. It will be a correction, not a brutalization."

"That's a tall order for a thrashing," Snape snidely remarked.

"Perhaps," Dumbledore admitted. "Is that your choice then?"

Snape seriously considered the other option. It was so much more public, though. He knew that at least the Slytherins would know why he was gone for a week - if it had been a vacation or similar they would have been notified ahead of time. They would know he was being reprimanded. He looked away from Dumbledore in shame. "I choose the strap," he replied, hoping not to regret his decision.

"Very well," Dumbledore told him. "We shall commence then after we finish our tea."

"I would prefer it now," Snape answered. v "I'm afraid this has put me off my tea."

"Very well," Dumbledore replied, vanishing the tea. "I will fetch the strap and you can ready yourself."

"Ready myself?"

"Yes, you need to remove your robes. But don't worry, you may leave your trousers on."

"Thank Merlin for small mercies," Snape replied sardonically, but he removed his robes and folded them.

He had been beaten before, many times. His father had often flown into drunken rages and aimed mostly at him, though his mother had felt his wrath on occasion as well. His father would beat him with whatever was handy - belt, stick, once it was a metal serving spoon. And it was frenzied and out of control, often ending when Snape lost consciousness. He had never been thrashed how Dumbledore was proposing to do it - in control, targeted, and for a specific reason. For some reason this unnerved him.

"Are you ready for your chastisement, then?" Dumbledore asked softly.

"I am," Snape answered, using all the occlumency he had to project calmness instead of the fear he was beginning to really feel.

"Why are you receiving this punishment, Severus?" Dumbledore asked him calmly.

"For making my pupils complain about me," he answered pertly.

Dumbledore, his eyes sparkling with laughter, corrected him, "Actually, it is for abusing your position with your students by unreasonable punishments, and for disrespecting a fellow professor."

"I understand," Snape replied. "I will attempt to choose more reasonable punishments for the dunderheads and show respect even to idiotic coworkers."

"Excellent," Dumbledore replied. "Now you can bend over the desk."

Rolling his eyes, he bent over the desk, feeling the acute vulnerability in pro-offering his posterior to the wicked-looking strap in Dumbledore's hand. Surely he could only give him the lightest of taps, Snape assured himself. The man had to be two hundred if he was a day, how hard could he swing a strap?

"Do you have any plea for mercy?" Dumbledore asked.

"Of course not," Snape snapped. "What is mercy?"

When the first crack of the strap met its target, Snape jumped at the impact. "Merlin!" he hissed, surprised at the impact.

"Are you alright?" Dumbledore asked. "Would you rather go with the other punishment?"

"I'm fine," he spat out. "Continue."

Snape braced himself and reinforced his occlumency shields. But Dumbledore wasn't content by having him occlude away the thrashing. He let the strap fall several more times, and then stopped to talk.

"Why are you being punished?" he asked Snape again in a soft voice.

"Because I abused my position," Snape answered tightly.

Dumbledore let several more strokes fall hard against the young professor's backside and upper thighs.

"Why are you being punished?" Dumbeldore repeated.

"Because I bloody well abused my position!" Snape replied, his voice hitching alarmingly. This having to answer questions battered against his occlumency shields.

The strap fell again, hard and fast. Snape found himself having difficulty controlling his breathing, and he was having an embarrassing hiss escape his mouth at every stroke.

Dumbledore paused again after stroke 17, letting Snape have a minute of break. "Tell me again why you are being punished," Dumbledore told him softly.

"I disrespected my students and coworkers," Snape replied, his voice dangerously close to crying.

"You did," Dumbledore answered softly. "You are having trouble believing that you can be a teacher and keep order in your class without abuse. You can, you can have authority without resorting to abusing your charges. And you can have the respect of your colleagues without resorting to picking on the least of them. Do you finally understand, Severus?"

"I understand," he replied, and he found that he actually did. His abuse of the students and mocking Trelawney had been based out of fear.

"Three more, then," Dumbledore told him. "Brace yourself."

Snape braced himself, and the last three cracks of the strap connected to Snape's backside, and this time the tiniest of tears formed in the corners of Snape's eyes but did not fall. He stood up, resisting the urge for his hand to rub his backside.

"Would you like your tea now?" Dumbledore asked him. "I could get some of those biscuits that you like so much."

"Shouldn't you be berating me?" Snape asked, his voice thick. "Yelling? Sending me away?"

"Whyever would I do that?" Dumbledore asked him. "If you were a student I would offer you a hug."

"A hug?" Snape asked, incredulous.

"Of course," Dumbledore answered. "After admonishment most people need comfort and assurance."

"You should be angry at me," Snape told him.

"I am disappointed you made those decisions," Dumbledore told him, reappearing their tea, this time with chocolate biscuits. "But I am proud of how you've handled yourself. You took your punishment well, even though it had to be humiliating and painful. You admitted your faults, and you even admitted the deeper issue that had caused your behavior. You even lowered your Occlumency shields enough to actually feel it; I saw those tears at the end."

"It did hurt," Snape told him. "But I have been beaten much worse."

"Of course you have," Dumbledore acknowledged. "Shall I cast a cushioning charm for you?"

Snape nodded, chagrined, but appreciated being able to float on a cushion of air rather than the hard wooden chair. He took the cup of tea and felt his stomach warm just a bit - he did feel comforted and assured. And by Dumbledore knowing his favorite biscuits and ordering them, well, he was beginning to feel a bit loved. The tears which had prickled before now threatened to actually fall, and he found he needed to monitor his breathing and shields or he was going to begin crying right here over his tea.

"You can take pain like nobody I've ever seen," Dumbledore told him. "You probably have endured the cruciatus curse more than any other wizard who has retained their sanity. Pain doesn't change you, and it doesn't make you reconsider. But I'm hoping kindness will."

"Kindness?" Snape asked, confused and incredulous.

"Kindness," Dumbledore confirmed. "You are now part of my family, Severus. And I'm hoping that the pain of disappointing me will encourage you to make better decisions about your teaching, not your desire to avoid the strap."

"Then maybe you should have just given me tea and cookies and had a kind talk with me."

"I tried that before, last month," Dumbledore told him, his eyes twinkling. "But I would wager you barely remember that meeting."

"Hmm, you served Earl Grey, I think?" Snape reflected.

"Exactly," Dumbledore told him. "The strap got your attention. I needed to speak in a language you understood."

"You could have gotten my attention in other ways," Snape protested.

"Perhaps," Dumbledore told him. "But there is also such a thing as justice, my boy. And we both knew you were pushing me until I stopped you. Consider this me stopping you."

Snape grumbled into his tea, but he knew the old man was right. And he also had the peculiar warm feeling again when Dumbledore had said he was part of his family. Did he mean it? Snape seriously doubted it. After all, Snape was ugly, mean, and a former death eater. Who wanted him in their family?

"More biscuits, my boy?" Dumbledore asked benignly. "Oh, and you may use a potion or salve to heal yourself if you must, alhough I think you should be mostly right by breakfast time whether or not you use a potion."

Snape realized he had no idea what he had signed up for in being a teacher under Dumbledore's supervision. He wouldn't just let him be. Grumbling again, he took the proffered cookie.