Yay! Already two reviews! I'm happy to announce that Klutz242 was in first place, with my second reviewer also correct, .sean.d. It was Severus Snape and I know that it was an easy one. So, I hope you liked the first chapter, there's more to come!
Enjoy!
As she watched the three laugh merrily around the fire at a joke one had just told, she felt a surge of warmth for them. Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, and Hermione Granger were unaware as their surveyor continued to stand in the corner, watching them carefully. She considered them all her children, as much as they considered her a mentor and, hopefully, a friend.
She was supposed to be walking around the corridors, protecting the students that walked them by day. She knew every password, or riddle of the common room, and in her disguise, she had slipped in out of a moment of melancholy, hoping to escape it. The three had looked at her for a moment, and they assumed she was allowed to be here.
Her thoughts turned to the one person who could always make her blush. Ever since the year she had come to Hogwarts, she had always treated him with respect, and a certain admiration. He had appointed her a position above the one she was currently at, and she had flushed with pleasure when he had told her personally. He treated her different than all the others. Maybe it was because she was a woman? No, there were other females. Maybe it was because she spent more time with him than all the others. She wanted to believe it was something more, but she knew it was a silly fantasy she entertained inside her head.
Her attention turned back to the three youngsters as Ronald and Harry asked Hermione to check over their papers. She watched Hermione raise an eyebrow, and as the two boys relented and asked her to finish them. She rolled her eyes. They hadn't changed at all throughout the years. But was that a bad thing? She asked herself. No, she thought, they were brave and gallant in their first year, and she suspected that that was never going to change.
Thinking she had had enough of a break, she jumped up from her perch, once again catching the brief attention of the three Gryffindors, and exiting through the portrait hole. As soon as it closed, and she lost sight of them, she returned to her original form and, straightening her back and shoulders, she set off again on her midnight walk.