A/N: Some more early thoughts of Severus's about Dinah! :) – I envision it occurring after their first two debates. Just FYI, as I can't recall whether it's made clear in the books or not, I have decided along with my friend and author of the co-story 'Don't Leave Me', CommanderValeria, that when a witch or wizard removes a memory from their head and puts it in the pensieve, they still keep the memory (in other words it's not like they forget about it except when they watch it in the pensieve), but by extracting it magically and putting it in the pensieve it allows them to (obviously) see it in a better way if they want to and it also prevents Legilimensfrom accessing the memory (like in book 5).


THE PENSIEVE


Severus regarded the swirling memories in the pensieve in front of him. The object had been purchased after the rebirth, mostly to deal with the plethora of infernal memories he had given to Potter when he had assumed he was dying. Granted, if he had not given them he would not have been reborn, making the whole thing an irritating paradox. He simply had to deal with the fact that Potter now knew everything about himself and his past, and deal with all of the horrible consequences of that knowledge.

That now the entire world knew about his past. Had he survived the battle normally, he would have ensured that it knew no more than that his true allegiances had lied with Dumbledore, and perhaps he could have lived in peace. At least the headmaster had prevented that awful Rita Skeeter from hastily publishing a book on the information Potter had spread. That was one small consolation. And of course, at least the headmaster had been reborn. He didn't like to dwell on it, but there was some relief in the fact that his horrible action had not been permanent. At least there was one friend around to spend hours discussing the baffling reason why either of them had been reborn in the first place.

And then there were the memories to contend with. They would have to be either returned to his head or put in vials, labeled, and organized for future perusal. The latter was a more welcoming prospect. He had discovered that there was some relief in watching the scenes. Watching her.

Of course it wasn't all relief. He found that watching the scenes from later in their relationship, especially, were difficult. Watching his rash behaviors, watching himself drive Lily further and further away from him, was the hardest thing of all to see. He had observed a few of those scenes right after the rebirth, when transporting the many memories from Dumbledore's pensieve to his own, getting them out of the headmaster's office where he couldn't keep tabs on them. But those scenes... he couldn't really watch them. Couldn't watch his awkward, disgusting teenage self associate with Avery and Mulciber and perform horrible acts just because they accepted him and made him think he had some kind of power. Worst of all, he couldn't watch Lily look more and more away from him, leaning towards Potter even when she supposedly hated the git.

And of course, watching his teenage self do and say all the wrong things to her, missing opportunity after opportunity to make her his, made it abundantly clear to his adult senses that he had absolutely nothing to offer a woman in that horrible form. Why would she have chosen that awkward, undesirable boy when she could have the ultimate Quidditch hero James Potter? How he had not understood how worthless he was in that respect baffled him – his strengths lay in his intelligence, his power, and his abilities, and as an adult he had finally learned to cultivate only those things, leaving him mostly satisfied with himself. Yes, the desire for power had ultimately driven her away from him, but it was because he had gone about it wrong – had had no confidence in his own strengths and had played up to the other boys, trying to make himself impressive in all the wrong ways, through association and fame and becoming a Death Eater. If he had been more like he was now, perhaps it could have been different.

More enjoyable was watching the earlier scenes, before he had fallen to his foolish power-seeking attempts, when they were children together up through their third year or so. Those days in the park before they even went to Hogwarts were even better. There was no Potter and no Black, simply himself and her. If it had stayed like that, again maybe things would have been different. Yet there was sadness in viewing those scenes too, but it was the only way to see her – really see her – now after her death.

The other memories were useful too, of course. Memories of his classes and of inventing spells – the things he did well as a teenager. And memories from the war and his time as a Death Eater, though regrettable, were still good to have for reference. There were other, even less desirable memories that he was organizing, and he did not watch those. Memories of his youth, memories of that man and of his mother. No, he did not watch those, but he organized them nonetheless. Chronicling his entire collection of memories seemed like an ambitious and time-consuming task, and indeed it was the one thing he could focus on, when he wasn't grading or making lesson plans, that distracted him from the irritating circumstances surrounding his inexplicable rebirth.

He had put many memories directly in vials and put certain ones in the bowl to observe them before tucking them away into the vials. The pensieve currently swirled with its usual random collection of memories. Most of the ones from Potter still sat in there, because he didn't feel like dealing with them yet, reminding himself of the things the boy had seen. He had extracted and labeled a few of them, but many still remained.

He would get to them in good time.

Severus frowned down at the bowl as his thoughts shifted, drifting to this year. So far classes had been terribly generic, the dunderheads as infernal, insolent, and incorrigible as they normally were. He took pleasure in removing points from Gryffindor and handing out detentions for the smallest infractions. Discipline – students today had absolutely none of the proper discipline. They were all wild like Potter and his gang, with no regard for the rules and no respect for the faculty, all of whom were older and more capable than them.

The past seven years had been particularly irritating – students had positively taken over Hogwarts. It was still difficult to endure, the fact that so much of the war against the Dark Lord had been fought by children. Adults should have done all he work, but prophecies and Dumbledore's whims had made it so it was all about Potter. Even as a first year the boy had been the one to solve the problems in the school and had been given every opportunity to do so. Maybe necessary but still irritating, and he still felt annoyance at the headmaster for the whole thing. It was almost laughable, almost sounded fictional, that children would 'save the day' as they had.

And yet this year there would be no conflict and no missions to undertake, no opportunity to take over what rightfully belonged to adults. It was an ordinary school year filled with ordinary things. Hardly things worthy of being recorded in a pensieve.

For some inexplicable reason Severus's mind shifted again, landing on a woman he had just met – the idealistic new professor of Muggle Studies, Dinah Samson.

He had never encountered a Muggle Studies professor of her type before. Though he still didn't see why the class was necessary, Dumbledore had certainly picked the right person for the job. She was more idealistic than Quirrell or Burbage had been, a trait that Severus found particularly sickening, and yet she also made better arguments than they had. Almost too good were her arguments, he admitted to himself, scowling. He had spoken with her twice, once in her rooms surrounded by foolish Muggle contraptions and once in her classroom after watching her administer her ideas to the students. Both discussions had led to debate, and both had ended at a standstill.

Severus Snape was determined to show Dinah Samson the flaws in her logic, as soon as he could find those flaws. They were there, he just hadn't searched well enough, and in future debates he intended to find them and lay them out, show her the illogicality of her idealism. It would not be difficult, once he found the right topic.

She was... intriguing, though. He had never imagined a Muggle Studies professor that actually lived as a Muggle, but Professor Samson did. She bewitched Muggle electronics and used them right in Hogwarts. It was criminal, in his mind, to do such a thing, but he did not think he would be able to stop it. She could be quite defiant about those things.

Why did that amuse him? Why was he – of all things – half smiling at the thought? He growled and forced the undesirable expression to leave his face. There was still much more to discover about Professor Samson. She seemed to be the same age as him, and yet he did not recall seeing her at Hogwarts when he was a student, though she insisted she had attended. She had been a 'special case', apparently, but he had not had an opportunity to ask her what that meant. Surely she hadn't been presumptuous enough to attend Hogwarts from a distance using bewitched Muggle phones or some such thing! No, that was too farfetched.

He would simply ask her for clarification at the next opportunity. Yes, that was reasonable, and at any rate she had already expressed an interest in continuing their debates. It was, in a way, refreshing to have someone at or near his own intelligence level to converse with, and the debates were quite mentally stimulating. Yes, Dinah Samson was yet another useful distraction from his rebirth predicament, and he was going to take advantage of all such distractions to the best of his ability.

And besides, he thought as he touched his wand to his head, recalling the moment he had been introduced to the woman and pulling out the memory, aside from her idealistic tendencies, there is nothing inherently bothersome about talking with the woman.

Yes, she did not annoy him as the other new professor Lucy Ketteridge did, nor did she annoy him as McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout did via house rivalries, or as Slughorn did by simply being... Slughorn. To say nothing of professors such as Trelawney, the annoyance of which no words could possibly describe. How irritating that he often found himself in the divination professor's presence, their paths always crossing in the most unusual ways. Perhaps that was simply a trait of hers, showing up everywhere that she wasn't wanted, though he was certain it happened to him more than it happened to the other professors.

The remaining faculty members were incompetent at worst and uninteresting at best.

Dinah Samson was, surprisingly, the least irritating colleague he'd met yet, save of course the headmaster.

He considered the pensieve again and then placed his wand on his head and removed, in turn, the memories of their two debates, dropping them one by one into the stone bowl.

Yes, his new colleague was intriguing. And perhaps these memories would have some use in the future.


A/N: Okay, I admit the Trelawney bit is a pun on the actors that play them in the movies – they are in a LOT of films together!