Part 1 ~ Blue Smoke
Pale hydrangia-hued smoke swirled around the stone chamber, playing on every thing it passed. It floated in wisps by tall shelves of glinting bottles and neatly ordered packages around the perimeter of the room. While some of it coiled upward to the ceiling, a thin, dreamlike layer hovered just above the chill floor like fog over a grass field in the early morning. The lightly scented smoke crisscrossed its way around the long, graceful hands stirring the potion from which the blue fog issued. It alighted on dark, robed shoulders and lingered about shining but probably unwashed ebony hair. The man inhaled deeply, drinking in the calm silence.
His quiet reverie was suddenly interrupted by a soft flutter of wings as a tawny great horned owl landed on its perch nearby. It looked at him, cocked its head to one side, and hooted softly. In an attempt to ignore it, the man refused to look up. Uninhibited, the owl made a curious whirring noise; with that it had its master's attention.
"All right, fine, I'm coming," Severus Snape snapped. Satisfied, the owl took off again in search of an open window. Snape slapped his glass stirring rod down on a nearby table and cursed aloud; he hated interruptions, and he had been so entranced by this potion that he had not noticed the steady pass of time. The extra hour or two he always gave himself for his work in the morning never seemed to last long enough for him to find any joy in making progress. As he reluctantly left the silver cauldron, he heaved a resentful sigh. How cruel it was to make him teach first-years in the earliest class of the day. And on a Monday, too. And it was only the second Monday of the term.
It was not, he mused as he ascended the stairs from his dungeon-like workroom, the actual teaching of the subject that he disliked. Despite the fact that he felt he was far better qualified to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts than anyone else, he knew that concerning Potions, he had not only experience but talent as well, and he thoroughly adored the subject. Furthermore, he could understand why Dumbledore did not yet want to associate him with the Dark Arts; after all, it had only been four years since he had begun to work against Voldemort, who just last year had disappeared—the amount of tension that still lingered around the name was immeasurable.
Snape slammed the door to the Potions classroom open so hard that it smashed against the wall before swinging back. The terrified first-years sat frozen in their seats; they looked at him as if he were Boo Radley. He grinned inwardly at the thought. Before he had even made it to his desk he had already reprimanded a Ravenclaw and taken ten house points, for which he mentally congratulated himself. The girl hadn't even fought back against her punishment. They were awfully meek today; even when he collected the essay that he knew had been a most common topic of grumbling outside of his classroom, they remained completely silent. Even so, he could almost feel the antipathy emanating from a few particular students.
It was often whispered that he didn't care what people thought of him, but that wasn't true.
He loved what people thought of him.
It was deliciously easy making people despise him; and though he had tried the opposite once, he had found that to be completely impossible. Indifference, polite indifference was the best he could ever manage—and so he found it much more satisfying to make people hate him, because then he could always find a way to extract raw emotion from them, pure and unmasked. For some reason, he always felt a strange sense of accomplishment whenever he managed to get someone to throw down his or her polite barriers and let his or her undiluted loathing flow freely at him. It gave him almost a feeling of superiority. Even more so with his students—he had complete dictatorial power over them, and could egg them until an outburst occurred, then smack them down with a hefty punishment for disrespect.
…Power. Yes…utter power over them. Promises of such a thing had led him to join the Death Eaters in the third year of their existence, just as their strength was gradually beginning to grow, creeping toward its climax. It was but a few years, however, before he understood entirely that he had absolutely no power whatsoever; he was just another of Voldemort's minions. Willing to see to his master's every bidding, he was expendable, controllable, and completely replaceable. He had actually found much more power in betraying his master than serving him, simply because then he was his own boss, and though he wasn't holding all the cards, at least he finally had a couple of his own.
But now, standing in front of the shivering first-years, he was pretty sure he had the whole damn deck, and all four jokers to boot.
"Pardon me…Are you…Professor Snape?"
He had just finished sliding the essays into his table drawer when he heard the voice and jerked his head up. A well-postured girl stood in the door to the hall.
"Tardiness!" he hissed, eyes sharpening.
Assuming this to be an affirmative answer, she stepped further into the room. "No, sir, it's my first day, and—"
"That does not mean I will excuse tardiness! Now, girl, tell me your name, and I shall write you down for detention this afternoon."
The girl's brow furrowed confusedly. Didn't he realize she wasn't in this class?
"SPEAK, girl! Before I take fifty points from your house on your very first da—"
"I'm in your house, sir." Though her eyes remained very serious, her brows twitched skeptically, as if her mouth wanted very badly to smirk. Snape, however, was back on his feet in no time (if, indeed, he was ever off them.)
"You should have said that in the beginning," he retorted, glaring icily down his long nose at her and pronouncing the words with the hard consonants all quite distinct, as though with each one he were attempting to prick her.
"Forgive me," she said quickly, but it was blazingly obvious that she didn't really mean it, she was just trying to propitiate him. "Professor McGonagoll sent me to speak with you—I've just transferred. This is my seventh year." And as she stepped closer, he could see that she was obviously not eleven.
Putting on an exasperated face, he stood. "Fine," he spat tersely, and it was clear that he meant it about as much as she had meant her plea for forgiveness. He stepped into the short corridor leading to his office, and she followed without being told.