"Are you sure you want to do this?"

The bat-like potions master gave me an incredulous glare. "Am I sure that I want to go on vacation?" he sneered.

I rolled my eyes. "No, are you sure you want me to take over while you're gone?"

He looked at me appraisingly. I knew what he would see: a short little blue-eyed girl with her blond hair up in two pig-tails on the side of her head. I also knew that he knew my looks were deceiving.

He smirked. "Out of all of the potion makers I have met, Breana, you are definitely not even close to being at the top." I stuck my tongue out at him. "On the other hand, I know that you will do well here. Albus will certainly approve." Severus Snape rolled his eyes. "While not the best, you are most assuredly far from the bottom."

I sighed. "Fine, I'll take over your job. How long will you be gone?"

"A few years," he responded in a calm tone, "maybe I won't ever come back." I rolled my eyes. That was so typically Severus: giving vague answers just because he knew it would irk me. And it did, so I stuck out my tongue at him. "Well," he said with finality, "that settles that then."

He made as if to leave but I stopped him with a tug on his sleeve. He looked down, giving me a questioning glance. "Have you already told the headmaster?" I asked innocently.

He frowned down at me and answered with a short "No."

I smiled up at him and said "I don't suppose you'd let me pretend to be you." Severus raised one eyebrow: a signal to continue talking. I smiled mischievously "If you don't mind donating some hair and polyjuice potion, I think I could have some serious fun with the staff and students."

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "If I say no, you will find some other way won't you?" I nodded. "Then I'd rather know that you will be safe while doing… whatever you will be doing." I hugged my friend around his waist and was about to thank him when he said "The condition being that you will take multiple pictures of whatever havoc you wreak, and send them to me post haste." I giggled.

He trimmed his hair, giving me enough material, and showed me his store of polyjuice potion, warning me to replace whatever I used. Then, he threw a handful of floo powder into the fireplace, stated his destination, and was gone. I wouldn't see my good friend for a while.

It all started a few years after the end of the war. I was finishing up my apprenticeship to a potions master by the name of Roy Mathis when Roy had told me that there was going to be a get-together between him and some other potion masters and would I like to come? Seeing as how I had only one test to pass before officially becoming a certified potions mistress myself, and wanting to see all of my master's associates, I said yes.

The party itself was actually rather boring. Roy spent all of his time mingling with people thrice my age and I didn't know anyone. I did however end up striking up a conversation with a certain potion's professor from Hogwarts. I'm not sure if I even remember what comment started us talking, but we ended up discussing the properties of my favorite potion. It wasn't until later that night that I had realized that the creator of said potion had been none other than my companion from earlier on.

I owled him immediately, saying something along the lines of: Why you manipulating git! You could have at least said that you were the one who bleeding invented that potion! Idiot!

Then he wrote back, (and I swear you can practically hear the sneer): Yes, well, (and here's the sneer) it isn't exactly my fault, Ms. Sherwood, if you are an exceptionally unobservant young lady.

From there started our (at first shaky) friendship, if you can call it that. Our notes were never overly friendly. In the beginning it was just a correspondence between potion masters. Over the years, however, we both began to write out about our lives. It was sort of like a diary, actually. We both knew each other only through letters, and it was easier to let out our frustrations and problems to people who wouldn't judge us, because we weren't very close. That was how I learned so much about Severus, and I dare say, that's how he learned so much about me.

One day, when I was done fully with my education and had grown tired with my job as a potions research assistant, I wrote to him about wanting a new job. He wrote back about how he deserved a long vacation. I asked if he wanted me to become his substitute teacher while he was gone, which led me to be standing in his office as I watched him floo away.

I added a hair to a vial of polyjuice potion and gulped it down, grimacing at the foul taste. I stumbled over to a doorway; guessing (and rightly so) that it was the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror, watching my face transform itself into Hogwart's greasy potions master. I smirked at my reflection and it smirked back at me in a decidedly Slytherin way. This was going to be fun.