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The door opened into an antechamber with sinks on the left wall, and little closets for the accoutrements young women find absolutely necessary to use or wear before showing their faces, on the right. To be honest, Severus had no idea what was in those closets and completely lacked any ambition to find out.
To the left and right, past the sinks and closets, were doorways to the toilets and showers.
"Miss Maris? Where are you?" Severus called. He tried to use his 'understanding teacher'-voice. Unfortunately it sounded more like his 'I'm quiet annoyed so hurry up and answer'-voice. He heard someone taking a shaky breath, and trying to suppress the whimper that is the natural reaction of every child under fourteen to his presence.
Severus smirked slightly and headed to the left doorway. The last door in the row of stalls was closed. Severus knew better than to ask miss Maris to open the door. This was a conversation he'd rather have without the possibility of someone seeing his face. He conjured himself a comfortable armchair and searched through his pockets for a flask of Firewhiskey. For medicinal purposes, of course.
"Miss Maris, would you please tell me why you have locked yourself in the bathroom?" Severus asked calmly.
He waited. There came no answer, but Severus could hear the sound of hurried breathing and crackling tissue. The child was probably trying to wipe her face clean of tears and snot with the toilet paper. Severus scowled in distaste. He conjured some nice soft tissues and threw them over the stall door.
A surprised gasp and a watery 'thank you' followed.
"Miss Maris?" Severus prodded, after sufficient time for face-wiping and discreet nose-blowing had passed.
"Uhm, I'm ... There...I'm bleeding!" Miss Maris practically wailed. Severus winced at the volume and poured himself some whiskey in a transfigured glass.
"Where are you bleeding exactly, Miss Maris?" Severus asked. Another round of uhms and sniffing followed.
"Uhm, well...ah..in my, my pants. And it won't stop. And it hurts." Miss Maris began crying again.
Snape closed his eyes exasperated. It was worse than he thought. The silly girl didn't even have an idea of what was happening. Severus took a fortifying swallow of his Firewhiskey.
Inwardly Snape praised his own tendencies to walk around with more potions in his pockets than the common apothecary had in his shop. He picked out a mild pain reliever and rolled it under the door.
"Two sips only, Miss Maris, and you can keep the bottle for tomorrow morning and evening."
Again Severus waited. If there was one thing he'd learned in his years as a Head of House, it was the fact that some conversations couldn't be rushed. Not if you didn't want to spend the rest of the night comforting a distraught child. And the rest of the following week, explaining your actions to each and every female faculty member, Trelawney included. Severus still shuddered at the thought of the lectures he'd gotten on sensitivity and tact from a woman who'd make students distraught with her predictions of their death every week.
After that blunder, he'd asked Filius how he handled giving his younger female students this particular lecture. Filius had looked at him in surprise and informed him blissfully of the fact that his students already knew all they needed to know, and if they didn't, the problem was easily solved with a book or two. At that moment Severus had envied Filius and wished his own students were more eager to learn from books. Then again, if they were, they would have probably taken over Hogwarts by now.
After another five minutes of twiddling his thumbs, the sniffing at the other side of the door had stopped entirely. Severus shifted a bit in his seat, swallowed another mouthful of whiskey, took a deep breath and started.
"Miss Maris, what you are experiencing at the moment, is a completely natural process called menstruation." He hoped the girl had heard the word before, from her female relatives or her older friends.
It stayed silent. Then a timid: "What is that, sir?" Of course, she hadn't. Sometimes Severus really wanted to hex those blasted parents who could happily decapitate their house-elves but shrank away from the thought of explaining the facts of life to their own offspring.
"When a girl reaches her teenage years, her body starts to change in order to be able to produce children. One of these changes is the start of the menstrual cycle. Every month you will experience a period of bleeding, probably three to five days." Severus hoped he could get away with giving only the bare basics. He had no intention whatsoever to start explaining the birds and the bees at, he looked at his wrist, ten to midnight, in a chilly bathroom.
"I'll have this every month?" Miss Maris asked appalled.
"I'm afraid so, yes." Don't ask, don't ask, he chanted in his head, even while he knew it was inevitable.
"But why?" Severus heaved a sigh. This was the tricky part.