A/N: Standard disclaimers apply. I assume you know what looks like something a talented billionaire author created and what looks like something an amateur American came up with.
All reviews are welcome!
August 25
Each minute that ticked into the past was a minute closer to the start of the fall term at Hogwarts-- an event met with a mixed bag of emotions from professors and students alike. Up and down the drafty corridors, the sounds of preparations could be heard, from the scraping of wood against stone as tables and chairs were moved and rearranged to the scratch of quill on parchment as last-minute notes were completed. A flurry of quiet activity, as the best intentions of the summer were squashed into hurried and poor imitations, with muttered promises that next year, those notes would be refined and that lesson rethought.
In the midst of that bubbling cauldron of activity, though, there was an island of calm. In the dungeons, where sunlight never creeps, bottles and jars glittered in the candlelight, lined neatly on the shelves, labels arranged to face the front, and there was one teacher who sat still and quiet, a book open on his knee, ignoring the activity around him. Severus had always felt he had gotten his lesson plans right the first time, and saw little need for tweaking them after fourteen years. His students did a commendable job on the OWLs every year, and even he could not seriously hope for better results. It was just one of the many results of careful planning, and Snape was nothing if not careful.
CRASH.
He looked up from the book, frowning at the ceiling above him, a sigh on his lips. It's too early for this, he thought sourly as another series of crashes, followed by a bang and a curse, pierced the ceiling, disrupting his peace like a wind stirring dust. He sighed again as he marked his place in his book, and set it aside, standing rather slowly, deliberately taking his time before setting off to the source of the noise. As he rounded the last corner, his mind was racing ahead to the various possibilities. If it was Peeves, he was going to have a word with the Headmaster, and this time Dumbledore would find it much more difficult to usher the Potions Master from his office. If the crash had been one of the handful of students who stayed in the castle over the summer holidays, he was going to make it his personal mission to see the dunderhead expelled. If it was...
As he came to a halt in the doorway of a classroom, he realised that there was a possibility he had not been prepared for, and it took him a minute to decide that what he was seeing was real. It appeared that the entire universe had come crashing to the floor of that classroom, and right in the middle of it, blinking as though stunned, was a young woman with thick dark hair that hung lopsided out of what had likely once been a bun of some sort. A bookshelf was lying on the floor, books and papers scattered everywhere, and a chair was toppled behind her, the desk it belonged with sitting slightly askance. All around her, spheres of different sizes and colors were rolling slightly back and forth, and, when he squinted he could see nearly invisible threads draped over her, like a spider's web. It wasn't the mess, though, that had caught his eye. It was the woman sitting in the midst of it. There was something oddly familiar about her, though he couldn't put his finger on what it was. Maybe it was her eyes, dark and intense even when she seemed to be having difficulty focusing. He leaned against the doorframe, watching as she shook her head, another thick lock of dark hair tumbling to her shoulders, and then touched her forehead with her hand. The way she peered at her fingertips gave him the impression of someone checking for blood, and that was enough to jolt him back into reality. He glided into the room, carefully sidestepping a toppled chair, and came to a stop just in front of her. "Are you hurt?" he asked in his soft voice that commanded attention.
The woman blinked owlishly up at him, and shook her head, though he wasn't sure if she was answering him or trying to clear her mind, but as she squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again, he decided it was the latter. She had almost the look of a woman trying to decide if she was looking at a ghost or flesh and blood, and it was marginally disarming. "Are you injured?" he asked again, sweeping his robes out of the way as he stepped over the debris to kneel in front of her. He reached out, his fingertips brushing her cheek as he turned her head to him, and he was certain that time that there was a flicker of something across her eyes. Recognition, perhaps?
"Pr-, erm. Hello," she offered, leaning back a bit and ducking away from his touch. He let his hand drop away from her face, and she seemed to regain a bit of her senses. "I'm fine," she answered at last, and placed her hand on the floor, to brace herself to rise, but winced instead.
He reached for the hand and picked it up, turning it over in his own, palm up, to find a shard of glass imbedded in it. Again, something crossed her face, this time a shadow of fear, perhaps, and she made a feeble attempt to pull her hand away from him. Most men would have likely let go, just knowing that she was pulling away, but Severus tightened his grip instead. "Are you hurt anywhere else?" he asked as he fished into his pocket with his free hand and brought out a linen handkerchief, which he wrapped around her hand and tied tightly.
"I'm fine," she repeated, this time sounding a bit more sure of herself. "Thank you for your concern, though. I'll just..." she didn't finish her sentence before beginning to rise, but her hand was still caught in his, and he prevented her from standing.
"You're sure, Miss--?" His lips thinned marginally. That was actually a very good question. Who was she? She looked too old to be one of the students, and besides, he made it a point to know all the Hogwarts students by name. He had to; he taught them all eventually. This one, though, despite looking vaguely familiar, was not one of his students, of that he was sure.
"Ichalia," she replied, using her free hand to move her hair gracefully out of her eyes. "Aislinn Ichalia. I am the new divination teacher."
Divination? A flicker of amusement crossed his face, and his voice was flat. "Perhaps, then, Miss Ichalia, you should consider more carefully what you see in your crystal. Perhaps you can manage not to..." he looked around again, and swept a hand dismissively at the mess. "What happened, anyway?" He reached a hand behind her back, and hooked it about her waist, helping her to stand. She was surprisingly light, almost weightless, and it took him a moment to work out that he was not actually offering her much help; she was merely letting him think he was. Shrewd, this one.
"I was hanging a model of the solar system," she replied smoothly her hand resting on his arm, as though for balance, but he was sure that if he stepped away she wouldn't even notice it, so little was she leaning on him.
"Ah," he said softly. "Standing on the desk, were we? You are fortunate, Miss Ichalia, that you did not break your neck. Come along." He still had her hand in his, and he tugged slightly at it, but she didn't move.
"Come where?" she asked, turning away from him and shaking her foot to dislodge a loop of the thread from it, then knealt again, carefully disentangling her robe from where it had snagged on a jagged piece of metal. Severus shuddered inwardly at the thought of what would have happened had she fallen on that.
"To the hospital wing," he replied, kneeling beside her and helping her pick apart a knot that was securing her right foot to the desk. "Madame Pomfrey will remove the glass from your hand, and, if we ask nicely, she might even have some suggestion for the lack of sense that led you to be standing on that desk to begin with. Tell me, Miss Ichalia, do you know what a ladder is?"
The look she shot him was venomous, and it merely strengthened his certainty that he knew her from somewhere, though damned if he knew where. "I need not bother Madame Pomfrey," she told him stiffly. "I am quite capable of removing glass from my hand mys-- oh!"
Having lost patience with her, Severus had stood suddenly and jerked her hand hard enough to make her face contort with pain, and she'd little choice but to stand or have the glass ground more deeply into the flesh of her palm. "Do not be silly, Miss Ichalia," he breathed. "I shall see you to the hospital wing myself."
She all but hopped out of the middle of the mess, and a momentary pang of guilt shot through his heart at the way she was biting her lip. She jerked her hand away from him, and he let go of it this time, wishing he hadn't been so rough with her as she cradled it with her good hand. "I am quite capable of finding the hospital wing myself, Prof-, sir. Good day."
Again, he found himself wondering if she knew him as well; that was the second time she had been about to call him something and changed her mind, and once again, he went over his list of students in his head, thinking back over the last several years even, but he could not remember ever having a student named Aislinn, nor Ichalia, though he could not imagine where else he might have met her. Thoughts of who she was were quickly dispelled, though, as she finally straightened, leaving him staring for a moment as the top of her head came even with his. Or perhaps a little higher. Yes, he was definitely having to crane his head back a bit to look into her eyes now. Not much, of course, but a little, and he thought she might be an inch or two taller than he was. Most unusual indeed.
Once straightened, though, she did not wait before she had swept past him in a dizzying swirl of midnight blue robes, leaving a waft of soft scent behind her that befuddled his nose. She was halfway down the corridor, her robes billowing about her like a cloud as she cut a sure path towards the hospital wing with the confidence of one who knew the castle well. When she was out of sight, he turned back into her classroom, and looked around, his eyes sweeping over the mess for clues. He didn't dare linger too long, but he kneel to pick up a sheet of parchment and studied it for a moment. He knew enough about divination to know that he was looking at a star chart, and he could have worked out the positions of the planets based on the elegantly scrawled symbols, but it was meaningless to him. It seemed to mean a great deal to Miss Ichalia, however, as he began picking up page after page of notes, written in a hand that varied from smooth and elegant to a fast scrawl, as though her quill couldn't keep up with her thoughts. Tiny doodles decorated the corners and margins of the page, and that piqued a memory, but again it was a memory just out of reach. He let the parchment float back to the floor and stood, then cut a swift path to the hospital wing himself.
When he arrived, Madame Pomfrey was dabbing at Miss Ichalia's hand with a cotton ball, a sharp slice of glass gleaming on a tray beside the bed. He winced inwardly as he remembered squeezing her hand with that in it; the 'shard' would have been big enough to kill someone, and he suddenly had a different appreciation of the woman who had not cried out when he drove that deeper into her hand. Dumbledore was standing beside her, and she was talking to him, not paying a scrap of attention as Poppy dabbed at the wound with something that bubbled enough to make Severus wince in sympathy. Miss Ichalia seemed to notice it no more than she would have noticed a fly.
Taking another step closer, Severus cleared his throat softly. Dumbledore's head came up, and he smiled, waving Severus over. "And you remember Professor Snape, of course?" Dumbledore was asking, and Severus' brows knitted together. Once again, he felt that he should know the woman, and Dumbledore had practically told him so just now, but he still could not remember her.
"Of course," she replied brightly, her eyes twinkling, and Severus re-evaluated his assessment of her eye color. He had thought they were black, but suddenly, standing so close to her, he could see they were blue. A very dark blue, like the midnight sky, and with a certain distant look to them that seemed to reflect eternity. "How could I ever forget dear Professor Snape?" she asked, extending her hand and bringing his attention back to the present. He opened his mouth to retort that he'd certainly managed to forget her, but closed it before the words came. There was something about her eyes and her smile... she was laughing at him. His eyes narrowed.
"Miss Ichalia," he said formally, folding his arms pointedly across his chest, blatantly ignoring her extended hand. A slightly warning look from Dumbledore, though, was enough quell his petulance, and he reached for her hand, but she'd already dropped it back to her lap.
"There, now, dear, you're good as new." Poppy was pocketing her wand again, and bustling to clean up the mess from her impromptu surgery. Miss Ichalia looked at her hand, then turned it over and looked at the back of it, then waggled her fingers before smiling a broad smile.
"Thank you, Madame Pomfrey. Now, if you will all excuse me." She had hopped down from her perch on the bed, and she smiled at each of the attendees in turn. "Madame Pomfrey, Headmaster," she nodded at them, then turned to Severus, taking a step forward until she was close enough that he could feel her warm breath. "Professor Snape," she said softly, and winked at him before turning abruptly, her robes billowing and her hair floating around her-- he just realised that it was no longer even making an effort to be pulled up-- and then was off down the corridor, looking cheerful in spite of everything.
When she was completely out of sight, Severus rounded on Dumbledore. "Who is she?" he asked pointedly, but Dumbledore only smiled, his eyes twinkling.
"She is the new divination teacher," he replied, and Severus felt his fist clenching beneath his robes. He knew that much.
"What happened to Sybill, then?" he asked. "And Firendze?"
Dumbledore waved dismissively. "They're still here. There has been a sudden swelling of interest in divination, though, and I thought it prudent to hire a third teacher. Miss Ichalia will be taking the fifth year students now, and Firenze the sixth and seventh in a NEWT class. Sybill will continue with the third and fourth years."
Severus sneered. "Why all the sudden interest in divination?" he asked, and Dumbledore smiled again, as infuriatingly as ever.
"I would expect, Severus, that it has something to do with the events of last spring, though I may be wrong. Aislinn is of the opinion that it is the influence of Mercury in Pisces, and perhaps she is correct."
Aislinn. Once again, Severus wracked his mind for a clue as to who the new divination teacher might be, but once again he came up with nothing. "Who is she?" he asked again, a note of pleading in his voice this time. Once more, Dumbledore smiled.
"That is her secret to keep or reveal as she will, Severus. If you want to know, perhaps you should ask her."
