I know, I know, it took me long enough. Here's a nice long chapter to make up for the wait and keep you all from finding out where I live and slaughtering me in my sleep.
Once you got past the novelty of a talking hat, the Sorting Ceremony was at least as tedious as every other academic convocation Clara had ever been forced to endure in her career. Judging from the fidgeting of the students already assembled in the Great Hall and the fixed nature of the faculty's attentive smiles-- this close, she could see the slightly glazed look in their collective eyes-- the other occupants of the Hall felt much the same way. She caught a sympathic smile from Minerva before returning her attention to trying not to be too obvious about watching the incredible display of illusory magic that was the Great Hall's ceiling. At present it had taken on the appearance of the Arctic sky, and the shimmering ribbon of the Aurora Borealis rippled and blazed across the star-studded darkness. She watched in awe, and was so enraptured by the display that she nearly fell out of her chair when Dumbledore placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Professor Becket? A few words?" the bearded face beaming down at her appeared both amused and concerned. Struggling to remember the last few minutes, she realized that the Headmaster must have just introduced her to the school at large, and that she was looking like a scatterbrained dunderhead. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a wink from Minvera, a broad grin of encouragement from Hagrid, and a nasty smirk from Snape.
"Thank you, Headmaster. It is an honor and, I confess, a surprise to be here. I'll be learning about your world at the same time as I'm teaching you about mine, and I suspect that I'll be heartily glad none of you can deduct points from me!" That earned her a scattering of laughter, and scanning the audience, she was heartened by a wave from Ron, echoed by two companions who could only be the infamous Hermione and Harry.
Following the end of the Welcome Feast, a thoroughly stuffed Clara waddled upstairs to her chambers to finish unpacking, then proceeded toward Dumbledore's office for the meeting he had requested before the Feast. Half an hour, three wrong turns, two maliciously swerving staircases and an animated armor-suit escort later, she found herself standing at the foot of the staircase leading to the Headmaster's office, engaged in a staring contest with the gargoyle. "The password? Try 'I'm a professor and the Headmaster asked to see me and I'm late, so let me in or I'll kick you,' she snapped after several wrong tries, and the gargoyle's eyes narrowed menacingly.
"How many times must I have this discussion with you both?" Dumbledore's voice drifted through the closed entryway, hollow and thin with distance and muffling. "We need your collaboration-- you have the Potions background, she has the Egyptological background, and you are both two of the brightest researchers we have. I think--"
"Headmaster, I'm not questioning her intelligence, or her qualifications." Even muffled by the staircase and the walls, Snape's deep voice registered clearly, and the shiver it sent down her spine momentarily distracted her from its content. Once she had parsed the statement, the gargoyle snickered at her stunned expression. Snape, admitting her qualifications? Her intelligence, no less? "But however knowledgeable in her own field, however quick a study in Potions, the woman is arrogant, temperamental, rash, and entirely out of her depth in this world. She will not last, and she will impede my work!"
Dumbledore responded to the outburst with a chuckle. "Now, Severus. She says much the same thing about you. You are both arrogant, temperamental, and impatient-- but you are also both quite capable and quite intelligent, and I suspect that you merely both demand respect for those things, and not unreasonably so. You don't have to like each other, but I recommend that you learn to respect each other's abilities and function in a professional capacity."
"Headmaster, I--" Snape began, but Dumbledore cut him off.
"Remember your vow, Severus," he said sternly.
Snape grumbled something she couldn't hear, and a moment later the door slid open, and Snape emerged at a brisk trot. She caught a glimpse of pale features glaring at her before he whirled and swept off down the corridor in the opposite direction without a word. Sighing, she ascended the staircase. "You wanted to see me, Headmaster?"
"Ah, yes, Professor Becket. How are you settling in?"
"Just fine, thank you. I finished my lesson plans last night, and I'm quite looking forward to teaching." She offered a genuine smile-- that portion of her assignment, at least, she truly would enjoy.
"I am pleased to hear it, Professor. I take it that you heard my exchange with Severus?" She looked startled, and his eyes twinkled at her merrily. "Oh, yes, that was intentional. You couldn't have heard through the walls and down the staircase even without the silencing charms, but I did a little tweaking..." He gestured at the air around him with one hand, smiling. "It is often best not to have to repeat oneself, don't you suppose?"
Clara nodded, unsure what else to say. "Yes, and I suppose you're right about the collaboration. There's no denying that Sn-- Professor Snape, sorry-- is bloody brilliant, but... to be honest, Headmaster, the man terrifies me, and the only time he doesn't is when he's pissing me off."
To her great surprise, Dumbledore laughed, and quite placidly offered her a lemon drop before speaking. "I suspect, Professor Becket, that he angers you because he frightens you. You are unaccustomed to being frightened of much, and the fact that Professor Snape can manage it touches on an insecurity which manifests itself as anger."
Clara nodded again, feeling a little like an automaton-- she suspected strongly that people often felt that way when dealing too closely with Albus Dumbledore. "When do we begin work, then?"
Dumbledore twinkled a smile at her. "Severus requested, in that insistent way he has, that you join him in the Library at your earliest convenience."
Forty-five minutes and a run-in with Peeves later, Clara slipped into the Library, only to be immediately hissed at by a portrait hanging near the door. "Quiet! And it's after hours besides, I'll call Filch!"
"Hush, it's all right, I'm a professor," Clara grumbled, earning another hiss of "Quiet, I said!" Shrugging, she shook her head and ventured further into the darkened library. "Professor Snape?" She caught sight of a flicker of candlelight in the Restricted section, and moved through the stacks toward the glow. At last she rounded a corner to see a black-clad figure hunched intently over a pair of clay tablets and a stack of books. Even in relative repose, Snape reminded her of a predator waiting to pounce. He straightened slightly and reached for a book, and the fluidity of the movement was almost feline, reminding Clara of a panther. She shivered.
"Professor Snape."
With obvious deliberation, his head lifted, black eyes fixing her with a look of cold contempt. "Ah, Professor Becket," he drawled in a voice dripping with disdain. "I see that you mistakenly believe your new title to confer exemption from the usual rules regarding punctuality."
"Well, Professor Snape, it seems that yours renders you exempt from basic good manners," she snapped back reflexively at him, a little surprised by her own boldness, "and I don't believe in double-standards."
His eyes narrowed, and Clara recoiled a step or two from the sheer force of the anger in that glare. She told herself that she was haughtily standing her ground by not looking away from that dark, furious gaze, but in reality she found herself unable to tear her eyes away. Those usually cold, impassive eyes suddenly resembled the turbulent blackness of a storm cloud, crackling with energy and simmering with barely-restrained power. He terrified her in that moment as much as he ever had, for she was certain he could kill her with a word, a gesture, or drive her mad with a mere thought and the power of his eyes, but the power, depth, and energy she saw there drew her inexorably.
After a long moment, she saw Snape's jaw twitch slightly, and one hand lifted to gesture imperiously at a chair. "Sit down, Professor Becket. We have work to do," he barked.
She sat, arranging her notes on the table before her. "We do indeed." Snape paced behind her, and she felt every muscle in her body tense with the instinctive sense of a dangerous creature stalking just behind her. Don't let him get the upper hand, she reminded herself sternly of McGonagall's earlier words, because once he has it, he keeps it, and Merlin help you then. Stand up to him, but tactfully, and she stood, turning to face him.
"I told you to sit," he snarled at her.
"And I'm a professor, Professor, not a student in detention," she retorted, keeping her voice as level as she could manage. "Let's conduct ourselves like civilized colleagues; this will go faster and we'll be rid of each other that much sooner. I suspect you look forward to that as much as I do."
"Indeed," Snape replied smoothly, and took a seat across from her. "In the interest of... civility... then. A summary of your progress thus far, Professor Becket?"
Resuming her seat, she gestured at her notes. "I've continued to analyze those Theban tablets, and I've identified most of the ingredients listed and converted the measurements to contemporary equivalents, but--"
"I am quite capable of making elementary measurement conversations given a hieroglyphic lexicon, Professor Becket." Snape waved a hand dismissively.
Clara bit down on her tongue hard enough to draw blood, remembering his words to Dumbledore. Professional respect, she reminded herself. "I didn't doubt that, Professor Snape, but I supposed your efforts would be focused in other directions," she ventured in a carefully tactful voice. "Have you made any progress with the ingredients?"
"Some of them are easily recognizeable; the herbal you owled from Cairo contained more than a few. Some of the references, however, appear indecipherable. It seems you have led us on a wild goose chase, Miss-- Professor." A slight sneer accompanied the last word.
"I very much doubt that," Clara snapped, then caught herself and sighed. "The texts predate the Old Kingdom, Professor Snape-- the idiom used and the writing itself is likely to be quite different from the Middle Kingdom texts I sent you. Hieroglyphics as a writing system hadn't entirely coalesced into a single unified language this early on; local dialects could vary pretty substantially, never mind the difference in time." She paused, and Snape inclined his head in a barely perceptible nod.
"Go on, Professor Becket." He waved a hand impatiently, but the impatience was interested rather than dismissive.
"Some of the names and descriptions are fairly straightfoward, and I sent that Middle Kingdom herbal in the hope that you'd sort those out, at least. Others are harder to translate, because the text might give only vague descriptions, and some of them were only named because of the symbols used to write the word, not the meaning of the word itself, while still others we'll just have to puzzle out based on their use."
"And?" Snape leaned back in his chair, regarding her with cool detachment.
"I believe I've identified all but three."
Black eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he reached out a hand for her notes. "Show me." She tensed slightly as he reached past her, and a cold jet of fear raced up her spine. His gaze flickered briefly to her, one eyebrow quirking upward slightly, and then he gestured to her notes.
She launched into an explanation of her translation, enthusiasm for her work overriding her anxiety as she went and almost shielding her from the unnerving intensity of Snape's sudden attention.
"Hmm... infusion of boiled esparto... how did you arrive at this conclusion, Professor Becket?"
"The symbol, there? Those pointy green reedy things? Looks an awful lot like esparto, there's a picture in--"
"Yes, yes, I gather as much. Spare me the inevitable recitation of your bibliography, if you please." He scowled slightly, and Clara nodded. "You are wrong," he said offhandedly.
"Beg pardon?"
"Think, woman!" he snapped, jabbing one slender finger at the tablet. "This is an invisibility potion. Espardo interacts with powdered ostrich eggshell to produce what effect, Miss Becket?"
"Professor Becket." She folded her arms over her chest, glaring at him over the rim of her glasses. She wasn't as good at that particular expression as Minerva, but she was making a run for the title of amateur champion.
"Hmmph. Insolent Muggle wen-- well, get on with it." The man seemed to use scowls in place of periods.
"I'd have to look it up," Clara conceded with a shrug, and her shoulders slumped slightly at the look of triumph on Snape's impassive features.
"See that you do. The rest of your translations at least appear plausible. I shall see if I can produce anything useful from this."
She grinned despite herself. Grudging approval from Snape was akin to a Nobel prize from any other source. A trifle hesitantly, she pointed to a question mark on her translation list. "This is the one I'm not sure about. Powdered heart of something, but I have no idea what creature the text is referring to." Turning to the tablet, she pointed out the appropriate set of characters. "It's this symbol here."
The dark figure of the Potions Master leaned over her shoulder for a moment. "Muggle!" Snape snapped derisively. "I suggest, Professor Becket, that you refer to any first-year Care of Magical Creatures textbook. He stood, crossing the room in a few quick, graceful strides, cloak billowing behind him. Watching him move, Clara was struck by the fluidity and speed of his movements. Mentally, she compared him to a bat and shook her head-- a panther would be far more accurate.
Sweeping back across the room, he thrust a book at her. "Page two hundred and ninety-seven, Professor Becket."
Taking the book, she flipped through the musty pages, pausing occasionally to watch unimaginable creatures snarling at her from within the inked confines of their illustrations, until Snape's impatient "Ahem! Professor!" startled her back to page-turning. Reaching two hundred and ninety-seven at last, she read the subject heading. "The Sphinx?"
AN: No, I didn't make up esparto-- I got from an Encylopedia Britannica article on Egyptian flora and fauna, which I suspect I'll be leaning on heavily for potions ingredients. The bit about the evolution of hieroglyphics is also more or less true.
Next time: Crabbe and Goyle get more than they bargain for.
