The door closed behind Hermione Granger and Severus Snape allowed himself an invisible sneer.
Gryffindors.
He bolted the door behind her and shrugged off the Invisibility Cloak once more.
Too much to ask to expect that she would be able to see past the House prejudice inculcated so assiduously during her schooling to understand what I said.
Still, he had observed enough of her classes, hidden beneath James Potter's cloak, to know that the newly-minted Professor Granger didn't allow her preconceptions to affect her teaching. She was as scrupulously fair as a Hufflepuff. As fair as —
He veered away from that train of thought with the speed of long practice, and settled into his old chair behind the Potions Professor's desk. From here, the room was almost exactly as it had been. The desks, arranged in two rows, forming a half-circle so that every cauldron could be seen by the teacher; the shelves of the less dangerous ingredients in jars and bottles and vials; the part-marked essays on the desk; the door to the storeroom where the more dangerous, and expensive, ingredients were stored.
It could have been any lunchtime in the past two decades: the morning's classes finished; the students in the Great Hall with those members of staff more sociably inclined presiding at the high table; the dungeons at peace, for a short space of time.
Except the essays sprawled across the desk were marked in a round, looping hand, not his own angular script.
He picked one up. Michael Rowland, Ravenclaw. The boy who had apparently made the dunderheaded mistake of combining Billywig stings with crushed Moondew. Snape scanned the parchment and was forced to agree with Granger: the probability Rowland had deliberately created an opportunity for Aitkins to be in the storeroom alone was high. He reached for the quill beside the ink-pot and frowned when he realised that Professor Granger had still not broken herself of the execrable habit of chewing the end of her quill. Careful not to touch the disgustingly mangled feathers at the tip, he dipped the quill and noted a volume Rowland might find educational in the margin of the boy's essay.
They need a quest … he snorted at Granger's whimsy. What they need is a month's detention.
And yet he'd almost encouraged her. A very small and very safe quest … What had come over him? For a moment the air of worry and anxiety that had been her constant companion since her arrival at Hogwarts had cleared and she'd been, once again, the Hermione Granger whose boundless enthusiasm for truly insane enterprises had been the bane of his and every other teacher's existence. Polyjuice Potion … Hippogriff smuggling … not to mention the time she actually set me on fire. I'm glad that the weight of adult responsibilities has tempered her exuberance.
He was glad. It had been nothing more than a momentary lapse, an instant's irrationality he could only attribute to the effects of the curse … or, no, more likely, he had been motivated by the snide thought that natural justice would see Hermione Granger experience the constant fretting over students' safety, the strain of vigilance, the discomfort and, on more than one occasion, the danger that Snape himself had been put through on her behalf, her behalf and that of Potter and Weasley.
Snape smiled. Yes, that was it. It would serve her right to undertake this lunacy.
Viewed in that light, it was almost his responsibility to encourage her. In the interests of her education.
.
.
.
Author's Note: A short chapter today, but the length of the ones coming up will make up for it. Thank you to everyone who's reviewed!