A little prologue of what could have been a WIP written for Wolf Moonshadow's Birthday. I offer it here for what's it's worth because I think it has a nice twist that lets it stand on it's own-but it's unbetaed and I don't intend to continue it. You've been warned.

Disclaimer: (c) 2006 Rabble Rouser/Harmony_bites. All rights reserved. This work may not be archived, reproduced, or distributed in any format without prior written permission from the author. This is an amateur nonprofit work, and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by Paramount or any other lawful holder.

Fighting the Many-Headed Monster

I entered the classroom, banging the door behind me. To rivet the little buggers attention, I put a glide into my steps and a twirl when I turned to face them. I smiled at them knowing it was a baring of teeth, a predator's warning.

Staring at them, I took a moment to match the faces to the names from the seating plan I'd memorized. I noted that one seat was empty: Emile Albert was missing. I swept my gaze across the room as I began my introductory speech. I kept my voice low, knowing exactly how softly I could go to project my voice throughout the room yet ensure the students had to listen carefully to catch each word.

"You are here to learn … "

They'd soon learn what a lapse of attention would cost them if they hadn't already known from my reputation. You couldn't tell me they were only children. Children: savages, all of them. With an unerring instinct for the weak. That, I had learned from my very first year at Hogwarts. Being the youngest on the staff, I knew I needed to use every trick right from the start to put students in their place, or they'd have eaten me alive.

Miss Debois cringed at my stare and pressed back into her chair, as if the very act was a form of Disillusionment Charm. The boy next to her, Evert, narrowed his eyes in evident challenge. Fancied her, did he? Or just saw himself as her chevalier, a champion of the damsel in distress? I held his gaze, tapping my wand against my leg, until he shifted uncomfortably. The next boy, Casser, was on the edge of his seat. Ah, yes, our resident genius. According to our Charms teacher, Casser thought he knew his subjects better than the textbooks or teachers. His black eyes glittered at me out of his pale face; his eager expression died under my glare.

I heard the door open behind me. It must be the missing boy—Albert. I heard the collective gasps of the class, and my lips curled into a sneer. I supposed my reputation had already warned them how I'd treat anyone who dared disrupt my class. Albert would have been better off skiving the class and claiming he was sick. I decided to let him just stand there and stew and finished my speech with a flourish.

"… if you think that like your other instructors, I'll just stuff knowledge into you like you're a dressed goose, you're much mistaken. I expect you to engage your minds … and you might even try processing thoughts through what passes for your brains before it comes out of your mouths."

I gave Casser a pointed look, and for a moment, he dipped his head, his lank black hair hanging forward to hide his face as if in shame. Yet when I asked my first question, it was his hand that shot up first. I ignored it and called on Miss Debois. The way she had reacted to my gaze tipped me off she had come to the classroom unprepared. The panicked expression on her face at my question confirmed it. Casser waved his hand frantically in a wide arc and began to bounce up and down on his seat.

"Are you having a fit, Mr. Casser? Perhaps you need to go to the infirmary?" A ripple of nervous giggles greeted my remark. Mr Casser would be well-liked only among teachers easily impressed by any student who bothered reading the text but not among his classmates. Know-it-alls are never popular. It was about time some teacher broke Casser of his habit of showing off before—

"Professor Granger," said a silky voice behind me. "If you like, I'll escort Mr Casser to the infirmary myself. After all, it would be cruel to subject him to this class if he's becoming ill."

I whirled at that voice and met a too-knowing look. I felt my cheeks heating and heard a babble breaking across the classroom as if my turning to the intruder had released the class from Petrificus Totalus. I clenched my fists and moved to the door in three strides. "This is my classroom, Mr. Snape, and I'll thank you to not interfere."

His lips twitched, and he bowed to me. He bent his head low to whisper in my ear. "It is 'Professor' Snape once again. I must admit; I didn't believe the flattering reports that you modeled your teaching style on my own. I wouldn't have thought striking terror into the hearts of students would be necessary for Arithmancy … or suit you."

"What are you doing at Beauxbatons?" A terrible premonition swept over me. "You're… you're not teaching here?" His lips widened into a smirk. My stomach clenched.

"I shall see you in the Dining Chamber at lunch. We have so much to catch up on."

I stared at his retreating back too long before turning back to my class. I was still so shaken I could hear it in my quavering voice and see it in the equally shaky scrawl of the equations I put up on the blackboard. The only thing that allowed me to continue was that after seven years, I could teach this class by rote. I knew though that I would have much ground to make up with this class. One of the downsides of controlling through intimidation is that if you lose face, lose their fear, you do not have the margin for error you can gain from liking and respect. And with my background, a teaching method that could gain me liking and respect was not open to me.

Damn the man. Snape would know that. He had rattled my cage, and the entire class had seen it. I couldn't regain enough equilibrium to cover it up by rattling them back. Compared to Snape, I was a rank amateur at this. And besides, one look at Snape I had been transported to eleven-years-old, remembering a self all too determined to prove to him I was no dunderhead. It took years and multiple humiliations to drive that puppy dog foolishness out of me.

I hadn't much liked the look of sneering recognition on his face. "Not necessary for Arithmancy." I'd heard the unspoken criticism in that. There were no simmering cauldrons here that could explode, no poisonous ingredients. I didn't need to wind students up to a taut attention to every detail and a strict obedience to every instruction.

Snape's glance, his inspection up and down my frame, his smirk, had told me he knew exactly why I treated my students the way I did, and that the reason had not even the scrap of excuse his apologists like Ernie Macmillan and Padma Patil could come up with: that Snape had needed to be more sergeant major than teacher in such a dangerous subject as Potions; that the stress of being a spy had made him snap at us; that the necessity to keep up the appearance of being a plausible Death Eater had made him cruel; even that the traumas he'd experienced as a student made Hogwarts toxic for him had caused him to lash out at us, poor sod. All that rot. Not even Blaise Zabini's insistence that Snape had needed to favour Slytherin given Gryffindor prejudices and control of the school would hold here. Beauxbatons did not have Houses, and it was not as if I favoured the Muggle-borns among the students to make up for still extant pure-blood prejudices. No, I could at least say that unlike Snape, I treated all my students the same: the way Snape had treated those not of his own House. I could tell myself that Snape of all people had no right to judge me or my teaching style, but a nagging voice asked me who better?

He had looked much better than he ought. His face was far less gaunt than I remembered, the harsh angles softened and lines filled out except for that memorable furrow between his eyebrows. He had lost that sallow pallor. His hair was matte black without even a grey hair—I could boast more—and hardly as stringy and greasy as I remembered. Oh, he was still as ugly as sin, but twice as se—.

Such a thought should make me feel ill. I tried to recapture how Snape had looked to me when I was a child, but part of me rebelled at that. To recapture how I felt about him either as a child or teen would bring back all my insecurities and the tangled-up feelings I had for Severus Snape with it, and I still had this class and the next to get through before facing the old bugabear again. In wizarding terms, we were now of an age and barely looked a decade apart to Muggle eyes, and in a way, that was comforting, that we were at the same level, but in other ways…

To some extent, Snape had been exonerated after the war. Dumbledore had taken extraordinary measures to ensure all the extenuating circumstances would come out and didn't simply leave it to his portrait, or the collection of his Pensieve memories at Gringotts.

The day Voldemort had been vanquished, Howlers had been delivered to the offices of the Aurory, heads of Ministry departments, members of the Wizengamot, and the editors' offices of every wizarding periodical in Britain from The Daily Prophet to Witch Weekly literally shouting Snape's so-called heroism to the rafters in Dumbledore's own voice. That had saved Snape from a Dementor's kiss, even Azkaban, but had hardly gained him an Order of Merlin.

We were both killers, after all, and the British wizarding world would never forgive our slaying the two most celebrated wizards of our age even though it had been necessary to Voldemort's defeat. Snape's order of banishment had been read out on the same day as mine. They couldn't forgive him Dumbledore's death. Or forgive me for Harry's.

Not that I think either of us deserved it.

The End