Contrary to most of the student's - primarily the Gryffindor's - opinions, Snape did not like assigning detentions. Inevitably, and despite his many failed attempts to come up with a solution to this problem, detentions meant Snape was stuck in a classroom with the most annoying of students for one hour longer then he was normally required to be.
Unfortunately, it was the most effective means to inflicting agony into the students. While masochism wasn't his predominant goal, he was determined to give in kind what headaches they bestowed upon him every class period. Most times he was able to assign them to the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid, or leave them to Filch's much more cruel machinations. However, on the odd occasion when he could find no other staff to supervise, their whined excuses of 'But, there's Quidditch' or 'But Sir, my homework' served as a balm to the annoyance of dealing with them after hours.
However, no detention he ever assigned made him question his own sanity so much as the one the first Tuesday night of term. When he saw the Sova girl leave dinner on the tail of the Argent girls, he assumed that they were making their way to the common room and that she was going to turn up in the potions classroom at a prompt time for her assigned punishment. He was loathe to discover that she was nowhere near the classroom when he arrived. Dreading the tedious search that he was certain awaited him, he quickly made for a hidden passage between the laboratory, through a corridor of long-unused dungeons that lead straight to the common room entrance. Knowing the hall to be largely abandoned, he did not bother to modulate his stride, and the echoing of his hurried footsteps nearly drowned out the faint sound of running water. He paused just in time to hear a snarled oath of "Jesu-fucking-Cristos!"
"You almost had it." A much more pleasant and calm voice followed. "You've got the incantation down pat, and you're swish-and-flick is getting much better. You have just got to learn how to control your follow through, or else you're going to keep spraying it everywhere like that. When you are done with the flick, hold your wand steady, but where you hold in controls the direction of the water."
By now Snape had started to peer through the grate on the door to one of the larger dungeon cells, to see Anezka lowering her wand that had been pointed at a large trough. "How the fuck do you know all this? You just started learning this charm today too, y'know."
"Well, actually," Snape could recognize which Argent twin it was, but he definitely recognized the haughty tone. "I've been working on this charm since the summer." Anezka sneered a bit, her expression clearly unimpressed. "What? I love charms. It gives me something to do when I'm bored." She sounded less self-important and just a touch more self-conscious.
"You're weird."
"She's not the one that carries around a collapsible cauldron and a Runsan Burner in her satchel." Snape looked to the shadows on the dungeon's far wall to see the second twin sitting cross-legged, elbow deep in Athrimancy homework. Her look screamed censure and disinterest.
"It's called a BUNSEN burner. If you're going to be critical, at least say it right."
"I have no need to remember what a stupid, muggle torch is called."
"Jade, stop it. Anezka, focus! Do it again, but this time, remember to emphasize the end of the word - Aguamenti. And don't forget to round out your wand movement."
Just as the slight, dark haired girl was raising her wand for one more attempt, Snape pushed the door open, making it slam against the stone wall behind it with a loud clang. "Explain yourselves."
"Well, I'm a seventeen year old witch, five feet four or so, about seven and a half stone, my hair colour would best be described as well . .. sooty, maybe?" Anezka finished her 'explanation' by tugging at a hank of hair, and trying to cross her eyes to see it better.
The girl's substitute tutor smacked her quickly in a bid to silence her, and shot a cautious if not entirely penitent look to her professor. "It was my idea sir. Anezka needs some catching up in Charms class, and since I am one of the best Charms students in our year, I thought I should help her."
"How very noble of you." Snape spat out the adjective as an insult rather than the good thing it was usually thought to be.
"Not really, sir. I'd much rather waste some of my free time helping her then see our House lose points because she can't keep up with the assignments."
"Be that as it may, I still have not heard a reason why you decided your impromptu charms lesson was more important than the detention assigned to her."
Onyx looked aghast, Jade looked smug and Anezka just looked confused. "She didn't tell me she had detention, sir"
"Stupid slag." Jade snickered.
"Oh yeah . . .. " Anezka seemed impervious to her companions' insults and accusations, and instead seemed almost surprised that she was supposed to be elsewhere.
"I suggest you head back to the common rooms immediately. Not you, Miss Sova." He halted the girl as she tried to sneak out between the other two. "You will follow me to my classroom for your detention."
She was surprisingly subdued as they made the short trip between the two rooms, and Snape found himself wondering why - what thought were darting through her head. Already he was accustomed to her voicing every thought that made an abrupt appearance in the swirling vortex of her head.
Upon reaching their destination, Snape immediately made a bee line for the large work table at the front, where he had already set out the ingredients and tools he needed to start the re-brewing process. It wasn't until he had already started grinding the sneezewort seeds into a fine powder that he noticed a presence lurking behind him, where Anezka was standing on tip toes trying to see what he was doing. "So, whatcha want me to do. I'm dead handy with a pestle if you want me to take over on that from you. Or I can start premixing stuff for ya, if you like. It's your detention. Or well, it's my detention but since you're so neurotic and control freakish . . .."
"If you are under the misapprehension that you will be allowed to come near my work, you will find yourself sorely disappointed." He snarled as he continued to turn the dried plant to a fine powder.
"So you mean to say that you've assigned me all this detention for running into you, like, and making you potions go off, but I'm not actually going to be made to help re-brew them. That you just gave me a month's worth of detention out of some sicko sense of revenge?"
"I applaud your keen observations skills. Perchance, you would like to apply them to the desk at the back of the room where you will note the scroll and quill. I suggest you start using them now so that I might possibly be satisfied with the with the number of lines you have written."
Her initial silence almost compelled him to look at her, but he dared not spare her the attention. "Lines? All you want me to do is lines? Well, aren't you a soft bastard! Usually I get stuck doing all the grunt work when I get detentions." She said with a chuckle as she started shuffling towards the table. Another moment was passed in silence save for the scrapping of chair against stone floor and the rustling of papers. Keeping the smallest amount of attention on the girl, he waited to see if she would set to her task quietly or not. "So . . . what exactly am I supposed to be writing?" He chastised himself for even believing that there was a chance she would cooperate.
"I believe that 'I shall not run in the corridors' would be considered appropriate." For all that he handed out detentions left and right, he seldom supervised, and even more seldom assigned lines.
Once again, he found her silence more aggravating then her customary noise, as she picked up the quill and started to write. Trying to disregard the paranoia ticking in the back of his mind, he refocused his attention to his brewing.
Before he knew it the hour had passed, and still Anezka sat quietly in her seat, the worst misbehavior to appoint to her being her unladylike straddling of her chair. As he stood over her, she looked up at him suddenly, as if surprised to see him there, rather than at his workstation. "Can I help you?" She asked, leaning over the parchments she wrote on like a dragon protecting its egg.
"Your hour is over. Please hand me your lines."
Something flashed in her grey eyes - Snape couldn't tell if it was fear, anger or surprise, but it quickly disappeared and was replaced with her usual expression of indolence and irreverence. "Oh, you're one of those what wants the lines turned in? My bad, I wrote really sloppy like, why don't I just take them with me and redo them and hand them in tomorrow. It'll be a burden, but I don't want you saying I didn't do them right."
"After thirteen years of teaching I am more than equipped with the ability to read children's bad handwriting." He kept his hand extended for the parchment.
"Well . .. " She started handing him the papers reluctantly, then jerked her hand back quickly and pretended to sneeze and cough all over the documents. "Oh, I'm soooo sorry sir. You don't want my germs - there was some nasty flu-like cold thingy going around at home. My cousin Grigor, he's the second eldest of the cousins, he sneezed so hard a little chunk of his brain flew out of his nose! I'm not even remotely having you on! One day he was like sneezing for five minutes straight then pop, out comes this little grey shriveled thing. Cousin Erdo tried telling him that it was just a huge boogey, but I'm sorry, you can't grow boogies that big, no matter how huge your nose is, and believe me, Grigor's nose is HUGE! Almost as big as yours . . ."
His anger built all through her fatuous excuses, and finally, he simply snatched the papers from her, not giving her the choice, or the option to argue more. "Get out." He rumbled lowly at her.
With a martyred sigh she slowly stood, and drug her feet, hesitating at the door. "But . . . I . . ." She looked genuinely upset for all of a second, then shrugged. "Don't say I didn't tell you. Don't come crying to me when a chunk of your brain plops out of your head."
As soon as the tapping of her feet dissipated down the corridor, he retreated to his office and sat down, placing her work in front of him. At the top of her work, her name and the assignment, and the first quarter of the page was filled with passable lines - that is, if 'I will not impersonate a three-legged hippogriff' and 'I am not a mountain goat, nor is Professor Snape, ergo, I shall not challenge him to a head-butting competition.' counted as lines. In his opinion, it didn't much signify, as the main intention was to keep her occupied and out of his way, which it seemed to have accomplished.
It wasn't until he started reading further, past such gems of irreverence as 'I will not test the relative softness of Snapykins chest to a brick wall with my head.' and 'Iway allshay otnay unray inway ethay orridorscay.' that he noticed her sentences trailing off, and replacing them were what first appeared to be scattered ramblings. Irritation surged over him, and he started to make plans to make her redo them when he noticed a familiar equation and felt a shock go down his spine. Now with rapt attention he scanned over her words.
"He's obviously using a 3:1 blend on the wormwood to boiling water, which seems high but he must be using it as an antipyretic. Most likely have to keep a controlled dosage though to keep it from being toxic. Wonder if he's ever tried cutting it with firewhiskey? Is he mixing Snotmustard oil with flobberworm? So THATS how he keeps the potion seperated - you shake it to mix in the mustard-flobberworm concoction with the rest of the potion. Holy cow on fire - he's got three cauldrons simmering at once and he's still able to concentrate on his portion controll . . . "
The entire scroll was filled with such musing, questions and detailed notes on every move he had made in the last hour. His recipe was laid bare on the paper in so many words, described by her observations. He took a moment to ponder what enervated him more; her aptitude with recognizing unmarked ingredients by sight and smell as well as understanding their subtle uses, the fact that she was watching him the entire detention, or the fact that boldly written in smeared ink at the bottom of the page lay the phrase "Hot damn! He's entirely less offensive as a human being when he's brewing. . .
He felt the foundations of his assumptions about the girl quake. Never in the past decade, at least, had he so wrongly read a person. She was certainly bratty and rude but she was clearly cleverer then he had given her credit for. It was now obvious to him that she hid a sharp and cunning mind behind a wall of offensive noise and attitude. The ramifications of this discovery burdened him and he mentally added her to his list of students to watch.