Pensieve Souls

by Jemennuie

Amidst Voldemort's rise, a new DADA teacher joins the staff during Harry's 6th year and attempts to juggle an angry Snape who wishes he had the DADA position himself and family trouble from the past. Meanwhile, Hermione tries to discover the origin of Dumbledore's Pensieve. AU-ish.

1. Prologue

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Prologue

A poor idea.

It was in retrospect, at least.

It had been cold and cloudy that summer, a summer where strangers walked the street with hunched shoulders and knitted brows and the furrows underneath their eyes etched with mistrust. It was the summer when Florean Fortescue's shop closed, the cobblestones of Diagon Alley were graced only with furtively hurried footsteps, and the goblin's coldly calculating registrars had announced a 1.2% increase in unemployment and a 3.6% decrease in GDP.

It was, in short, the summer You-Know-Who had risen, like sulphur from the earth, like hushed voices and haunted glances, like death.

That was the summer where small classified ads in the Daily Prophet announced in an understated voice that Hogwarts was, once again, searching for a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and strangers chuckled at the thought, but she turned the corner of that ad over, and turned that thought over and over in her mind until she sent a neatly written letter and her resume to Hogwarts.

Now, however, it was becoming clear that she should have listened to the knitted brows and hurried footsteps, the hushed voices and haunted glances, and not the goblins' stark black numbers and the thought: Wouldn't it be nice to have a stable job?

In retrospect.

Of course, she wouldn't be in the position she was in now, looking back at her decision to apply for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, if he hadn't lied, but she supposed her hands weren't exactly clean either.

Lies, after all, made the world go round.

…

A/N: All following chapters will be longer than this one, as this is only the prologue. Also, this is a rewrite of a story I have on my old account, but I am publishing it anew because there are a large number of differences between this and the original story. This re-write is dedicated to all of my wonderful reviewers from the first version of this story :)

Thanks to the fabulous kci47 for beta-reading!

Disclaimer for this and all following chapters: I don't own Harry Potter and its associated characters/ universe, and I am not earning any profit from this. The image of Alan Rickman in the story icon similarly does not belong to me.