A/N: And now for more plot revelation, plus some proof of how badly I write guy characters, as well as some explanation of the 'incident' McGonagall still worries about from the first bit. Here you go.

Chapter Three: The Dark Lord Couldn't Be A Girl

"Was that old mark on your arm very bad, sir?" Julie inquired of her new professor, who blandly asked her just:

"How do you mean?"

"Well, two things, really, did it hurt and what's the symbol?"

"I will tell you, Julie-" Snape paused in his tracks toward the dungeon. "Is it alright if I call you that, 'Julie'?"

"Quite, in fact it's the name I prefer."

"Oh. Good. Well, I am going to tell you, it did hurt. It's rather faded since the Dark Lord was defeated, but the scar I fear I'll keep." He couldn't help but notice the entirely rapt way she was paying attention to his speaking, as if there might be a pop quiz at any moment that'd she'd need to know his words for. Why, young Julie had twice nearly run into the columns that were supporting the ceiling. It was odd, and yet, familiar. "Have you been told anything about a Dark Lord, otherwise known as Voldemort or You-Know-Who?"

"Some little kid in the first years said you're all afraid that I'm going to turn into this you-know-who. Or is it you-know-whom?"

"Cripes, you really are an innocent."

"Scarcely."

Julie's sarcasm decided to unveil itself.

"I mean of the wizarding world!" As Snape was preparing the ingredients for the two potions they'd be needing now that Dumbledore was on his way, Julie listened to his story about how the Dark Lord was defeated.

"Many years ago, before you or I were even born, there was a wizard who was so completely evil that he tried to take over the world. His given name was Tom Marvolo Riddle, but he disliked it because it'd been his father's and thus changed it into 'I am Lord Voldemort.' You see, his father was a Muggle who'd abandoned Tom before the poor boy was even born, his mother died in childbirth, and the child grew up in an orphanage. Much like yourself, I would say. Anyway, he began to gather a group of followers called the Death Eaters, whose job it was to wreak his havoc over all the things he told them. It meant killing, it meant torturing, and it meant rending families and people's lives apart. It was most decidedly not a pretty pastime."

"You were one of them?"

"Ashamedly, yes. But then I left them, and came into the acquaintance of one Albus Dumbledore, whom you will be meeting very shortly. Under his tutelage I regained my sense of right again, and came to work both at this school and as a double agent against Voldemort, who happily met the first of many downfalls about three years later."

"Many downfalls?"

"It took a couple of tries for us to kill him. When old Voldemort attempted to kill a baby boy named Harry Potter- -tell me you've heard about him?" Julie shook her head, ignorant. Snape smiled. "Oh, good. Well, his mother gave her life to save him, and as a result Voldemort could never touch the boy, until the end of his fourth year here at Hogwarts. The Dark Lord, who had been banished into an unstable spirit without a body, managed to rise again with the aid of his coward servant, Wormtail."

"I've heard those words said to that name before!- -but, please, go on."

Snape noted that reaction suspiciously and continued:

"Alright. At that time began the war effort, the fight to prevent Voldemort's rising to his old and greater power. The struggle continued for three long, bitter years, with gains and losses from both sides of the table. Finally, Wormtail kidnapped a lovely Hogwarts student, just because she happened to be a close friend of Mr. Potter's. She was missing for close to ten months, during which the Avada Kedavra curse was performed on Voldemort in a final showdown battle by in excess of twenty-five wizards. I will say that I, myself, was one of them. The servant, Wormtail, vanished. Do you know what time of year we defeated the Dark Lord?"

"January?" Julie asked nervously, knowing it was the time of her very own birthday.

"Quite correct. Have you any idea why I'm brewing these two potions?"

Julie hung her head sadly, unconsciously letting the remnants of bangs fall across her face just like the teacher's.

"You think that I'm the next Lord Voldemort."

For some reason Snape didn't really want to bully this student.

"Not really, but just in a manner of speaking." Despite his unusual kindness, Julie still looked close to tears. "I think they're thinking about reincarnation, which may have been what Wormtail intended when he gave you that scar there."

"How are you suspecting that I'd ever met Wormtail?"

"Because you've got the scar of a wand failure, Julie. I went to classes with Wormtail, he managed to give himself several in the course of a year. Only magic folk can fix them, and you, being out with Muggles, couldn't. That's the type of scar it leaves, and no magic can change that."

"Oh." Julie still looked very somber. Then suddenly her mood picked back up. "Could you tell me a little more about the student?"

"Well…she was brown-haired. And quite pretty."

"Could you be a little more specific? What did she do, what happened when Wormtail kidnapped her, did you ever get the poor girl back?" Again, she was being terribly and amusingly sarcastic. Snape bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

"Well, we did get her back, and she helped to cinch the evidence for some Death Eaters' execution." Julie turned an interrogative look on her professor.

"Because I suspect you liked her. After all, you called her 'lovely,' and you did seem furiously bitter at that Harry Potter for being her friend and so getting her kidnapped, just seemed to add up to me, y'know, sir." Snape was quite pale at the Starcatcher girl's accuracy and candor. "Was she alright, though, after all the mess with Wormtail?"

"She was alright," Snape admitted, "Though her memory wasn't- -quite. She had only hazy recollections of the whole ten-month episode, all three-hundred-fifteen days, seven hours, and twenty-five minutes of it."

Julie raised an eyebrow and said smugly:

"Ah. I can tell now that you missed her terribly. Was she your daughter, or a niece, or a cousin? Or was she maybe just a girl that you loved?"

Quite abruptly, Snape stood and took young Julie by the shoulders.

"It is never just a girl that you love." Julie understood his meaning and retreated just a little. Very quietly and respectfully she asked:

"But did you ever get her back?"

Snape's hawkish face twisted to a triumphant smile.

"Yes, Julie, I did."

*********************************

They returned with several bottles of potions, and McGonagall was startled to see the fifth-year Julie had even been allowed to carry up a few bottles. Normally Snape rarely ever trusted the steadiness of even his most steady and oldest students for carrying the vials, but it seemed that he and Julie'd bonded over something in the dungeons. 'Oh, well,' she thought. 'It seems he bonded with the first one.'

"Ah, Severus," the stately old wizard there greeted. It was Dumbledore. Snape put down the potions and all but rushed into his arms. "Married life agrees with you, still, I see." They clapped hands on each other's backs like quasi-father and son, then drew apart as Snape prepared to introduce his brand-new pupil.

"Professor-I mean Minister Dumbledore, this is Julie Starcatcher." The old wizard, who seemed quite peculiarly not old, in spite of the white beard that may have reached his knees in places, offered his hand to a profoundly scared Julie. She shook it as Snape explained that this was the great Albus Dumbledore. 'Well, obviously,' she thought, nervously getting a little snippy but restraining the words. The wizard looked into what seemed like her very soul through her eyes, and her cheeks reddened.

"Hello, Julie."

"It's nice to meet you, sir," she answered politely, somehow wondering if 'sir' were indeed the right address for this mystical and almost kingly figure.

"The pleasure is all mine, dear. Now, do you know anything about why we have brought you here with all these potion-bottles?"

"Either you think I'm a reincarnated Voldemort or the child of a Death Eater. Your job is probably going to be to find out and that's what all the potion-things are for."

Dumbledore smiled and asked of Severus:

"Absolutely no experience of the wizarding world?"

"None, sir. I just had to tell her about the Dark Lord in the first downstairs."

"Dear me," the old man exclaimed, not unkindly. "It appears that no matter what we do with you, Miss Julie, you are going to be a profoundly different wizard from anything we have ever experienced. Rather a lot of the students-in fact, all of them, I believe, come in with at least some minimal knowledge of magic and it's history. You, however, have pitiless close to none. You're either a Riddle or a Potter or something completely new. I earnestly hope you aren't the first one."

"Actually, sir, so do I." Julie looked so downright flustered that Dumbledore grinned and motioned for her to sit down. "So, what are you planning to do to me?"

"Do to you? Why, nothing, my dear, unless you agree to the test. We're just going to give you a little something known as Veritaserum, which is one of the most potent truth potions we have available, as well as one that enhances your memory. It isn't because we don't trust you that we're using the truth serum, just that-"

"Oh, don't worry, sir, I wouldn't trust me, either." Julie had had lie detector tests fairly often before, at one or another of the many orphanages of her past, and she had actually been able to prove her abilty to neatly circumvent very many of them. It wasn't really that she was dishonest, just a bit over-clever and bored, was usually the psychologists' decision. She told all this to Dumbledore, who laughed and said he felt the same way about Muggle lie detector testing.

"But tell me, Miss Julie, do you really think that you're just bored and over-clever? Or do you suspect that you have thoughts that we might possibly term 'evil' on occasion?" Julie hung her head and nodded. "Well, that's alright, because we all do. It just matters that very few of those particular thoughts happen to be in control of you that makes a good or bad decision in a wizard." Professor Granger returned from a door in the back of the office, and Julie's eyes lit up inquisitively. "Now, do you have any questions before I tell you more about the testing?"

"Well, just one, sir. Why did he make the potions if she's the Potions teacher?" Julie indicated Granger and Snape, and watched as Dumbledore burst into laughter. "Did I say something funny?"

"No, just incredibly gifted, that's all. I can tell that you're a marvelous observer. No, the reason why I had Snape and not Gingersnap make the potions is because I needed her to owl a few Aurors-they're like wizard detectives."

"Gingersnap?" Julie inquired, looking a little confusedly at the brownhaired, browneyed and fiercely reddening professor. "Why would anybody call her-?"

"Oh, that's a little private nickname, on account of her last name is Granger-Snape," Professor Severus explained it dryly. Julie looked wildly from one and to the other, with an expression not so much of disbelief as of amusement.

"You two are…she's the student?" Snape grinned slightly and Dumbledore completely cracked up. Julie found it highly amusing, also, and tried her best to restrain a howl of laughter.

"Couldn't just leave out that little detail, now, could you, Sev?" Hermione inquired, definitely red but also smiling. Julie was so earnestly shocked and amused by this discovery that she forgot to question the vast difference in their ages-not that it mattered a small fig to her.

"So students here are allowed to date teachers?" she asked jokingly. Hermione and Severus both shook their heads, giving forth a loud and resounding

"No!'

"We broke the rules rather severely, I'm afraid," Professor Snape explained it. "Not that there's anybody that you'd really want to date among the staff…"

"Oh, I d'know, that Professor Flitwick didn't really seem that bad." Severus nearly choked on his tonsils before he realized that Julie was joking. The expression on his face as well as Julie's sick little jest sent the others into paroxsyzmic laughter. Dumbledore mentally stashed away a comment.

"'Deals well with stress by use of humor'-a very useful trait, Miss Julie. I wouldn't swear that it was quite appropriate, but then, most humor rarely is. Did you have any other questions before you deide whether or not you'll take the potions?"

"Well, sort of…what do these few potions taste like?"

"Oh, quite abysmal. You'll be spitting for a week," Professor Snape joked in an absolutely deadpan voice. "But they do get excellent results, possibly shed some light on where you did really come from."

"Really?" Julie didn't care how it tasted, she just wanted some answers. "Line 'em up then."

"Keep in mind, Miss Julie," Professor McGonagall pointed out pointedly. "Every secret you've ever had or shared with anybody, whether you remember it or not, will be up for open scrutiny. We can promise to keep what we hear a secret, but some things my be in your mind that you don't want anyone to hear."

"Will I be conscious of what-all I'm saying?" Julie asked.

"Not at all- the memory potion pretty much makes you mumble in your sleep, only audibly." Snape was surprisingly not being so abrasive.

"What-all do you suppose I remember?"

"Everything you've ever perceived in your life from the day you were born to when you fell asleep on us."

"We'll get you a bed in the hospital wing, you should wake up around noonish tomorrow." Julie looked nervously at Professors Granger, Snape, and McGonagall, then back at the Minister of Magic.

"Just you four listening?" she inquired tensely.

"Even fewer if you like, dear." Hermione patted the girl on the shoulder, with a maternal air that made Severus want to sigh. There was a glance between them missed by all but Dumbledore, who had already suspected a good home for Julie.

"Oh. Well, line 'em up, then."

"You'll take the potions?"

"Sure. What's the worst it could possibly do to me?"