Round 3

AN: Pride of Portree (so the team challenge is Pride)

Beater 2:

Optional Prompts: (occasion) first day at school; (emotion) surprise,

Word count category: 1 501 - 1 750

Word count: 1 577

Of Lioness and Sanity

Severus Snape would have never admitted to being nervous, but truth be told, he was. In fact, the only reason he was not suffering a nervous breakdown was his impressive occlumency skills. And how could he not be nervous? It was his first day at school. Well, pardon me, his first day as a teacher. Mind you, him being a teacher willingly was as good as Lucius Malfoy loving muggles.

Besides, half of his students to be used to go to school with him, and had witnessed his altercations with the Marauders first hand. And they were supposed to simply submit to his authority, now? He was torn between derisive laughter and a desire to get drunk under the table. His shields, thankfully, locked that in a separate dark corner from the fact that he was going to be teaching Potions and not Defense Against Dark Arts. Unfortunately, he had not yet managed to swallow the cherry on the top—him being head of house— well enough for it to meet a similar fate.

Nothing seemed to be able to hold his attention enough to divert his thoughts from his damnable uncompromising reality. At least it was not Azkaban.

As he paced his quarters in a manner reminiscent of a caged tiger, a book caught his eyes: "A study in lion's behaviour". He was pretty sure it was a gag gift from Minerva McGonagall because the stern witch would never lower herself to refusing to give a trusted, fellow order member a Christmas gift, and yet was too firm in her beliefs to give him something he would truly enjoy. He had been shocked speechless when he had been given it, even if his mind had come up with the above-mentioned explanation in seconds. So, despite the book being gifted to him with not the best intentions, it made it to a prominent place in his new quarters.

Looking back, it probably wasn't the wisest choice of reading material to kill time before the undoubtedly loud welcoming feast, but he found it hard to concentrate in his agitated state and the tales, even the scientific ones, of faraway places had a way of drawing one in.

He had been in for a surprise that year; and not only because Minerva had started to treat him collegially. No, the biggest surprise had come from her house's behaviour. There was no reason for Gryffindors to resemble lions. But the more he looked at them, the more he found that they did. When he first noticed the similarity, he had thought back to his own school days and realised, that yes, it had been so, even back then. Marlene and Dorcas had worked like lionesses in a pride of lions. It never failed to stun him. Not the behavior of the boys, but the behaviour of the girls.

Their behaviour was so far removed from the actions of the girls in all the other houses, but so similar to the behaviour of lionesses, that he found it tragical. Lily was never like that. But then, he firmly believed, that Lily could have fitted into any house without a problem.

When Miss Granger first stepped up to lie on the behalf of her pride, he had read the truth with a quick glance, Potter practically projected it. He and Weasley had guilt written all over their faces. Even if Weasley dropping his own wand, in shock at what Granger was saying, was not a dead giveaway on its own. Back then he had faded into the shadows and watched Minerva scare them both to death, seemingly believing Granger's tale.

Back then Severus had simply taken it as gratitude on her part. After all, the boys did save her life. Only it did not end shortly afterward as he had hoped. No. Granger proved to be as doomed as any lioness. And to think, he had briefly hoped that she would shine on her own as Lily once did. Oh, she put on a heroic effort into trying to get them to study, Severus thought bitterly, but Gryffindors were as lazy as lions. And as the zoologists proved, that meant awfully lazy, since all of the work in a lion's pride was done by lionesses.

Only Granger's charges were children, so they managed to combine being sinfully lazy with getting into an absurd amount of trouble. And they were so innovative with it too. She tried to protect Potter from Quirrell's curse and even as Severus tried to put out the damned flame from his own robes, he found himself oddly thankful. Because, as surprising and incomprehensible as Severus Snape still found the lioness-like behavior of some Gryffindor girls to be, he was secretly very grateful that Lily's son had such a fierce and clever protector.

As he stared in silence at Potter's still slightly bloody face, he wondered whether the whole house business was just some weird social experiment. Bloody lions did not deserve them—fierce lionesses and loyal badgers alike. Tonks had pulled off that healing spell nicely if Snape had not been a spy or if the two of them had bothered to vanish the blood, he would not have noticed that Potter's nose had been broken at all.

They are just lazy bullies, and yet people love them. Call them kings of the jungle. Even as they only ever properly move to impress and win lionesses for their pride or to save their own miserable hides. Actually, Severus once heard a fable, where a pompous, arrogant, cruel lion was taught a lesson. Although the other animals in it were quite outplayed too. The ridiculous curse made them either sickeningly forgiving or unfortunately starving as getting enough nuts to eat is a lot more difficult, when one is suddenly a Hagrid-sized squirrel. Severus disliked that fable with a passion.

He deducted points, but he did not give the boy a detention since he had the manners to thank Tonks, and sent Potter to the Great Hall. He watched miss Granger fuss over her so called friend. Ah, so she did not consider this whole mess to be of Potter's make. Maybe, Draco had finally learnt a bit of subtlety? Good, that could save his life as snakes, unfortunately, had no lionesses to protect them, especially not ones as arrogant as Draco. Even if Draco had a very protective mother, he thought bitterly.

Severus shook his head. Those absurd thoughts were very insistent, and they always attacked a bit more viciously on the first day of school, whatever it was. As he waited for two boys to finally arrive in their flying car, so he could thoroughly chew them or as he watched miss Granger stay alert through Umbridge's enlightening speech and then explain it to her charges. And Potter managing to once again get into trouble before he even stepped into the school did not help.

Maybe he should write them down. Lily used to say, that if a thought bothered her, it usually stopped when she put it on paper. Now, that was an amusing thought: Similarities between lionesses and Gryffindor students. An essay by Severus Snape. He snorted. He could see it. Severus would write that apart from the type of walk and the ability to use magic, the biggest difference between lions and Gryffindors laid in the fact, that females of Gryffindor house did tend to have a more impressive mane than the males.

Severus closed his black tired eyes and took a deep breath. Oh, Merlin help him, he was losing it. This accursed war was finally doing away with his sanity. Or was it simply that comparing students to animals was more appealing than thinking about the bloody civil war that was starting in earnest outside Hogwarts' ancient walls? On the other hand, if the alternative truly was letting Slughorn remind him of days long gone or to think about what his crazy master was planning, was there really any harm in comparing Gryffindors to lions and lionesses?

With another deep breath, Severus made his way to the teachers table. It was time to survive the insufferable Welcoming Feast. He smirked, well, maybe not as insufferable this time, considering what these brats were about to learn. Teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts was a dream come true. It saved him from watching the dunderheads torture their potions equipment instead of trying to learn the beautiful art of brewing, and it gave him a chance to curse them without breaking school policies.

Hermione looked at the book in her hands in stunned disbelief and then laid it on the table before her. She pinched herself. It hurt. So this was not a dream. Maybe the trauma of Second Wizarding War was finally catching up with her. 'Or maybe it caught one of its crucially positioned players' whispered a smooth sinister baritone in her mind. She shook her head to clear it. When did her inner sarcastic self adopt that voice? And why? And an even better question, why did she inherit that book? Honestly, why did Snape even write such a book?

And so Hermione sat and stared at the innocuous looking book. Its cover was done in a pretty shade of orange with a black baobab tree silhouette and black lettering proclaiming: The Prides of Lions, the Prides of Gryffindors: Study in Sociobiology. Under that baffling title stood the equally baffling name of the author: Severus Snape.