There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient—at others, so bewildered and so weak—and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way—but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

—Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.

—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Severus Snape leaned back languidly on the staff room sofa, perusing the latest Potions Today and waiting for the clock to chime seven for the start-of-term feast. He glanced up at the new professor—Thorpe was her name—sitting across the room from him. Her tangle of curly black hair was pulled up in a knot, one strand falling loose as she bent over some highly technical publication. Her legs were curled up beneath her in a decidedly unprofessional manner. He kept glancing at her furtively, as if to make sure she was still there; he wished she would leave so that he could read his article free of distractions. Regrettably he had no such luck. The new professor's deep green eyes repeatedly darted up and met his black ones, and each time she gave an irksome twitch of her lips, as though aware how much these exchanges grated on him.

"Were you nervous your first day teaching, Professor?" She had a rather low voice for a woman, soft and pleasant.

"No," he sneered, lying. He pushed his copy of Potions Today up with a snap so that it hid his face and guarded him from looking at her again.

"Really?" she queried, the dry skepticism in her voice plain. She was already irritated with him, he thought with satisfaction. "Somehow I doubt that."

Despite himself, he lowered his magazine just enough to glower pointedly at her. "I see no point in asking questions to which you already know the answers, Professor Thorpe," he drawled.

"I would say asking questions you already know the answers to is generally the way you get to know someone, Professor Snape." She lifted her own magazine with a huff. Her mirthful eyes glared pointedly at him over the top of it in a deliberate mockery of his own actions. He gave a snort of derision, nose still buried in his magazine, and proceeded to expend such great effort in ignoring her that he took in not a word of the fascinating article on polyjuice potion. The moment the clock struck seven, he swept out of the room in high dudgeon, without another word to his companion.

Professor Snape certainly was an interesting man, Penelope Thorpe mused as she strode toward the Great Hall for the feast. If being a complete bastard could be called interesting. She repressed a snort of private laughter. She really shouldn't have mocked him like that; it wasn't at all professional. But, Merlin's pants, if anyone could stand to have someone make fun of him, it was Severus Snape.

In the little time she'd spent with him, either in the staff room or during the routine introductions she'd endured as a new hire, Professor Snape had been taciturn, aloof, glowering, and generally completely unlikable. She was also well aware that he had once been tried as a Death Eater and pardoned for she knew not what reason. None of these admittedly sparse facts disposed her to think at all well of him; yet, despite herself, she wondered about the dour potions master. What was his story, and how on earth had he gotten to be such an infernal old curmudgeon?

There was one other thing, too, that she found intriguing about the man. Penelope had walked with a limp ever since she was thirteen, and while no one bullied and mocked her as they had during her school days, she was well used to the awkward staring and rude comments of adults. However, Professor Snape had not given her a second glance. The facts suggested it was just a product of his being so apparently disinterested in everything, but her instincts told her it was a kindness—in its own quiet, mildly irritating way.

Walking down the familiar hallways swept all thoughts of Professor Snape from her mind as she indulged herself in memories. It had been ten long years since she had graduated from Hogwarts, and yet she remembered every staircase, every trick door, every turn of the drafty halls. This place had been her first real home, where she had first found hope and friendship—and had first lost those things, too, she supposed.

It was so strange to be back here, to be walking along the dais that she had stared up at so nervously as a first-year herself. She never would have imagined then that her professors might be just as nervous to see her as she was them. She took her seat and stared out at the flood of black-robed students, waiting for her introduction as the new Buidistry professor.

Buidistry, from the Gaelic word for witchcraft, is the study of the origins, theory, and practice of magic. It combines magical innovations with Muggle scientific techniques in an attempt to unravel the deepest questions about magic: where does it come from? And how does it work? Although buidistry has many practical applications (the neutralization of Dark curses; the prediction of magical bloodlines and abilities; and the development of marketable products for squibs, to name just a few), I contend that the field also has great potential to dismantle systemic inequalities in the wizarding world. Buidistry inspects and undermines many of our most fundamental assumptions about relationships between wizards/witches and Muggles, as well as the connections between wand magic and the often overlooked but incredibly powerful magics of house elves, goblins, centaurs, and other beings.

Severus glanced, scowling, from this passage to the picture of the witch beneath it. She smiled rather awkwardly, her wild black hair pulled back for the occasion, above a caption reading, "Penelope Thorpe, 27, graduate with honors of Draoidess Academy of Higher Wizarding Education. A rising star in the field of Buidistry, and the youngest witch to win the prestigious Babbling-Hodgkin Award in over a century."

To Severus' great chagrin, the new professor had made an appearance in his copy of Potions Today, in an article discussing an elixir she had developed to neutralize the lethal effects of Mandrake cries. He read over her methods, and her irritatingly impassioned stance on magical equality, with grudging admiration. The new professor was certainly clever, and an engaging writer. Perhaps when he got the chance he could ask Professor Thorpe a few questions about the elixir—provided she behaved herself and accorded him the respect due to a tenured teacher.