Chapter One

A great gray owl soared free above the Hogwarts grounds, aiming straight for the west tower. Its feathers were a rather somber shade of dull brown, belying its name, and a heavy, dark-colored ring framed its face. Large, formidable yellow eyes, situated so close to its beak that the owl appeared almost comical, regarded the castle below it with a sharp expression. Here was an owl who did not like to be disturbed unless the need was of utter importance.

Apparently he had deemed the letter tied carefully to his right talon worthy of his time, for it was with a respectful nature that the bird alighted on one of the windows of the Owlery. He was immediately quite surprised to find himself in a room with hundreds of birds more or less similar to himself, of all shapes, colors, and sizes. One of them---a large great-horned owl---noticed him immediately and flew straight to his side.

The two birds regarded each other for a moment with that silent communication common amongst animals.

You're lost, aren't you? thought the great-horned, rather bemusedly.

The newcomer looked away slightly, nursing his pride. This tone was undoubtedly one of What's it to you? It's not your business.

The great-horned, ignoring this, peered at the letter in the stranger's talon. He read enough of the scribbled address to know immediately where the owl was headed. He promptly shot a look at the newcomer that plainly said Follow me and took off, flying gracefully out the window.

The great gray lifted his huge wings and sailed out into the air after him. His leader led him a small distance above Hogwarts to a small tower towards the back of the castle. When he was sure that the newcomer knew where he was going, he turned back towards the owlery.

The great gray couldn't help but feel a little irritation---since when did other owls show him where he was headed? He was supposed to know where he was going by the address on his letter. The directions simply hadn't been specific enough. The owl inwardly cursed---if it is possible for an owl to do such a thing---the foolish human who had addressed the envelope.

He swerved towards the only open window of the tower, and landed there a little awkwardly, thrusting his head through it in order to peer inside.

A tall man with a thick, long white beard and strangely-shaped pieces of glass set over his nose surveyed the bird for a moment before ushering him inside with a wave of his hand. The owl complied, promptly offering his leg and the dog-eared envelope attached to it. The man untied the string very carefully, removed the letter, and offered a treat to the owl. He accepted it gratefully and flapped noisily over to perch upon a chair by the man's desk, obviously waiting for him to hurry up and read the whatever urgent news he had brought.

"Must get that window enlarged," muttered Dumbledore to himself. With a casual flick of his wand he set it right. He then turned, curiously, to the letter, slitting the envelope open and pulling the folded piece of parchment out of it.

Professor Albus Dumbledore,

I am very sorry to have disturbed you, but my father and I moved to England a week ago, from Canada (where I attended the Salem Academy of Magic), and I would like to know if it would be possible for me to transfer to Hogwarts. I have all the papers necessary; I can send them to you if you'd like.
The supplies I used at Salem probably will be about the same ones I need for Hogwarts (I brought them with me when we moved) but if I need more it would be no trouble to buy them.
I will be in fifth year.
Again, sorry if I am disturbing you.

---Amara Aramanth

Dumbledore surveyed the letter a moment through the half-moon spectacles over his blue eyes, as if to discern its validity. The girl is certainly polite enough, he thought. But she givens no reason at all for why she moved to England. And why on earth did she not have her father write the letter? The thought seemed to puzzle him for a moment. Finally he popped a lemon drop into his mouth and reached for the long black quill lying on his desk. Taking a sheet of parchment from the drawer, he wrote quickly:

Ms. Aramanth,
We will be happy to accept you into Hogwarts as soon as the required transferring paperwork is completed.
In light of the recent events, I will be sending someone personally to your residence in order to confirm it for the records. Since the train platform for the Hogwarts Express is well hidden to ensure safety from non- magical eyes, he will also show you the way to it and how exactly to get through.
Term starts on September 1st. I hope to see you then.

Sincerely,

Albus Dumbledore

Headmaster, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

He folded the letter and slid it into an envelope. The great gray, who had been waiting patiently upon the velvet-lined chair, pointedly held out his talons. Dumbledore tied the new envelope to his claws with the same black cord from the previous one. Just as the owl lifted into the air and sailed through the newly enlarged window, Dumbledore raised his wand, pointing it carefully towards the owl, and muttered, "Insignio."

**********

"Amara!"

Amara started at the sound of her father's loud voice. "Yes?" she called.

"Get this bloody owl off of me!"

Grinning quietly to herself, Amara tore up the stairs to the second floor. Her father---a tall, rather stocky man with a thick beard---had an enormous owl clutching frantically to the top of his head.

"Drefan!" she scolded, hurrying up to them. She held her arm up to her father's head, and the owl detached himself from the hair entangled in his claws and climbed onto it.

"Never did see what you magic folks found in owls," grunted her father, massaging his head. "Terrible birds, they are. Don't know why I bought you one of the damned things in the first place..."

Drefan, sensing that he was the topic of a rather unglorifying conversation, shot an extremely dark look at Amara's father and turned back to her, holding out his talons.

She was somewhat surprised to see that he had brought back a letter with him. She untied it carefully with slender fingers. Drefan, in return, was rather pleased to have his leg back. He took off hurriedly, flying down the hall to the old laundry room which Amara and her father had appropriately designated "The Owl Closet," as that was where the owl stayed and slept when he wasn't off carrying letters. Amara had stocked it with plenty of dead branches from the forest-like wilderness around her new house; thus the owl had all of the perches he could want.

Her father stepped curiously towards her, to read the new letter over her shoulder. The envelope was unmarked. She slit it open, pulled out and unfolded the letter, and they both read quickly what it had to say.

"What's this about sending someone 'personally' to our residence?" growled her father.

Amara shook her head. Misgiving had shot into her heart the moment she read that; she wasn't ready to meet an English wizard. "I've no clue. I put no return address on the other envelope, so I don't see how the Headmaster could even find our house in the first place---much less send---"

Suddenly, as if on cue, there came a loud knocking from below. Her father shot a bemused look at her, and they both headed downstairs.

Amara edged open the door cautiously.

A tall man---taller than even her father---stood at the entrance. He had black hair that swept down to his shoulders, pallid, sallow skin stretched thinly across his face, and flashing, ebony eyes that glinted and glimmered with an inner malevolence so strong that she shuddered. The rustling black robes that swept to his feet were all the indication she needed that he was a wizard, and likely the one that Dumbledore had (rather quickly) sent.

Everything about this man is black, thought Amara. She gaped openly at him for a moment before regaining her composure. "Yes?" she asked. If it weren't for the comforting form of her father beside her, she feared her words might have been more squeaks than recognizable forms of the English language.

He cleared his throat, and she was relieved---no, not relieved, pleased--- to see that there was the slightest touch of hidden nervousness about his features. He wasn't as emotionless and untouchable as he seemed. "Is this the residence of Amara Aramanth?" he asked. His soft, silky voice was every bit as smooth as his robes.

Fear obstructed her throat so that she could scarcely breathe, much less talk. She merely nodded mutely. What is it about this man that it is so intimidating? she wondered. He's being perfectly courteous, even if he is a bit... cold. Why am I so afraid?

"The Headmaster sent me," said the man, his voice tinted with the hint of a British accent that she could not help but notice. He shot a calculating look at her father, and then turned his cold, questioning eyes back to Amara. "You have the transfer forms?"

She nodded again, managing to get her vocal chords back into condition. "I'll go get them," she said, hurriedly turning back into the house.

Just as she left her father said in his gruff, low voice, "Would you like to come in?"

Amara heard Snape reply very coldly, "Thank you, but I believe I'll just stay out here." The tone of his voice seemed to suggest that their house was absolutely the worst he'd ever laid his eyes on, and that he'd rather eat dungbeetles than set a foot inside.

What right does he have to sound like that? Amara thought. Sure, it may be a little dilapidated... but it's a house like any other. He doesn't have to act like its got poison smeared all over the walls.

She hadn't felt this frightened in years---and it was all over the wizard Dumbledore had sent to "show her the way" to the train platform. If all the people at Hogwarts made her feel like this, she might as well just drop out before term even started! Her social life had been rather pitiful even at Salem; she dreaded to think what it would be like at a school in an entirely new country, where everyone already knew each other. She found herself fearing Hogwarts with a feeling of apprehension and foreboding that made her stomach go cold.

After a moment she pulled herself together and made her way slowly up the stairs towards her room, whereupon she found her old trunk and began to shuffle through it for her transfer papers. When she found them, she checked them to make sure they were completely filled out before heading back downstairs.

The man was standing in almost the exact same position as he'd been in before she'd left, waiting there silently with impatience written obviously across his face. His arms were crossed and his robes were rustling slightly in the light breeze. He turned his head as she came towards him, and his black eyes met her own. For a moment he stared at her, scrutinizing her face, as if he wished to read her mind. She realized, abruptly, that the reason for this was not just that he had taken a rather instant disliking to her; it was because he didn't trust her in the least.

Join the club, thought Amara.

She glanced at her father. His blue eyes---the exact same color as her own-- -were starting to narrow with suspicion, but he stayed silent, watching the stranger as if to make sure that he didn't try anything. For which she was grateful.

He took the transfer papers from her, barely glancing down at them before raising his eyes to her own again.

"Are you a muggleborn?" he said unexpectedly.

The sentence made Amara's blood go cold. In Canada she'd had nothing but trouble for the fact that both of her parents were Muggles. Surely... surely they would not have all that pureblood nonsense here, in England.

Watching him very closely for any sign of a reaction to her words, she replied, "Both my parents are nonmagical."

Ugh, she thought. Now he's going to ask where my mom is. And I'm going to have to tell him she's back in Canada, at our old house.

To her relief, he said nothing about the absence of one of her parents. Perhaps it was just too obvious. Nor did he even bat an eyelid at the word "nonmagical." Clearly the man didn't care if her parents were both half- newt, so long as they'd properly signed the transfer forms. The reason for his question was made obvious as he turned his head slightly to address her father and said, "You won't be allowed at the train platform. It's only for witches and wizards."

Her father looked as though he didn't like this new development at all, but he didn't object. "You'll take her there today?" he asked simply. The man nodded impatiently. "Do you have some sort of proof of who you are?" he added, not to be deterred from finding out what the visit was all about and whether or not he could trust the stranger.

The stranger's eyes flashed with displeasure; presumably this was because he was sick of all the questions. He reached into his robes, and for a moment Amara was afraid that he was getting his wand, so that he could curse them both into oblivion. But he didn't, of course; when his hand came into view again it contained a neatly folded piece of paper, a letter. He handed it wordlessly to her father.

He read it quickly, examining its seal as if to discern purely by staring at it whether or not it had been forged. Evidently Dumbledore had sent the black-robbed man with proof of his purposes. Whatever proof it was, it must have passed her father's inspection, for he handed it wordlessly back to the man and nodded briskly.

Then her father turned back towards Amara, and she blushed as he leaned down and planted a kiss on the top of her head, shooting her a dazzling smile which made her feel very warm and fuzzy inside. It almost countered the negative emotions brought on by the obviously disapproving man who watched this episode.

Almost.

Shooting a last glance at her father---as if it were to be months until they saw each other again, instead of minutes---she followed the man outside, closing the door softly behind her. To her surprise, instead of taking her towards the street that lead to town, he led her back behind her house. "Where are we going?" she asked in a voice she knew sounded terrified even as the words left her mouth.

He shot her an evaluating look, seeming to wonder why she was so frightened of him. "To a portkey," he answered at last.

"There's one behind my house?" Amara asked, surprised. He nodded. She had the sense not to ask why it was there, realizing that it was probably Dumbledore's doing. No doubt he meant to make it easier for her to get to the train station when it was time for term to start. There was no doubt, also, that the portkey was unregistered; if the British ministry was anything like the ones back across the Atlantic, they would have rather eaten dungbeetles than let someone start a portkey just so it would make it easier for a new student to get to school.

A moment later, as they made their way through a stretch of forest and Amara tried to memorize her surroundings so she could find the portkey later, she once again gathered up her courage, and asked the man querulously, "What's your name?"

"Severus Snape," he answered harshly.

No wonder he always looks so disagreeable, with a name like that, she thought.

Her fears, fortunately, were starting to abate as her brain finally realized that the man---Snape---didn't mean her any harm (physical harm, anyway) and with this came a new measure of boldness.

"What do you do at Hogwarts?" she asked, and flinched a little as the angry, impatient look flashed once again into his eyes.

"I'm a professor," he said abruptly, in a tone that said he'd had quite enough questions. "I teach potions," he added when he saw that Amara had opened her mouth to ask yet another question. She smiled wryly at his irritation---which, naturally, irritated him even more---and lapsed into silence.

Snape finally stopped about fifty meters from her house. Amara looked to the place he was staring at, and saw an old, nearly shattered flowerpot, half buried in dirt and leaves. She smiled again, ever so slightly. It was the most dilapidated portkey she had ever seen.

Snape glanced up at her as she came to stand directly behind the portkey, an unreadable expression---almost certainly an unpleasant one---lingering in his dark eyes. Amara realized that she and Snape would have to be in direct contact with each other as they touched the key, in case something were to go wrong. The thought repulsed her. Fear returned to her heart with a familiar tightening feeling in her chest.

Bracing herself for some verbal battering on Snape's behalf, she held out her hand. For a moment he looked down at it as if it were some kind of particularly ugly sort of slug; then, surprisingly, he took it into his own hand with a warm and strangely gentle sort of grip.

Then he reached out his other hand slowly towards the flowerpot. Amara had a short glimpse of his thin fingers coming into contact with the old clay; then there was a blinding flash of light and a jolting jerk from behind her navel, and she felt herself spinning through empty space.

**********

Snape grimaced as he and the girl beside him were roughly deposited at the edge of a loud and crowded street. Several near-by pedestrians stopped and cast them strange glances, as if to say Couldn't you have transported yourselves to a more appropriate place? before walking on and going about their business. The sight of people appearing out of thin air was by no means uncommon in all-magical places, especially that particular one.

He hated portkeys. It had been Dumbledore's brilliant idea to set one near Aramanth's house in the first place, even though Snape himself obviously didn't agree with it. The fact was, using a portkey was about the only option. The girl's probable lack of knowledge about England coupled with the distance of her house to London left them unable to depend upon the girl to get there on her own using the old Muggle transportation methods. Since she obviously wasn't licensed to Apparate, and since the lack of any kind of a fireplace in her household cast out Floo powder as an option (which Snape equally disliked), it was decided that a portkey was the most appropriate of methods.

He glanced beside him to check on the health of the girl who, unfortunately, still was tightly gripping his right hand.

Her long, yellow hair was disheveled; she reached out a hand to brush it casually out her eyes. Then, almost immediately, she let out a cry of dismay. Finally letting go of Snape, she bent down to retrieve her large, wire-rimmed glasses, lying askance on the ground. The left lens had been popped neatly out of the frame. She set about to pressing it back into place, only to see that the frame had snapped. Either she had landed a lot harder than he had, or her glasses were very flimsy.

She raised her large, luminous blue eyes, now free of their covering, to Snape's own. Snape waited, almost lazily, for the inevitable. Waited for the strange girl to open her overlarge mouth and ask him to set the glasses right, so that he could criticize her and point out that she, after all, had a wand and was perfectly able to do it herself. Even though she was underage and couldn't fix them even if she had known the appropriate charm, which he doubted.

To his immense surprise, she must have seen in his eyes that he had no plans whatsoever of helping her, for she only lowered her eyes sadly and remained silent. Seeing that he had already gotten to his feet, she stood up, clutching the pair in her wiry hand as if it was the only thing in the world she had left, and followed him down the street.

Snape wondered, not for the first time, what was so strange about the girl. Why, for one, was she so afraid of him? The moment she had she had laid her eyes upon him, her speech, expression, and eyes had been overcome by a terrible, trembling, uncontrollable fear. Much as he enjoyed the satisfaction this brought him, it was also a little unnerving. Could he really have been that intimidating, even before he had taken one point from her house?

And then, when she had mastered her fears of this unknown stranger at her doorstep, she had started to ask him questions, displaying a boundless curiosity, and ripening Snape's suspicion of her all the more. The question of whether or not he could trust the girl and her eccentric father plagued Snape so that he could think of little else. That, he knew, was the real reason why the Headmaster had sent him; not because Hagrid, the ideal choice for introducing new students to Diagon Alley, was absent at the moment for the Order of the Phoenix business, but because everything about this girl aroused suspicion and Snape had a knack for rooting out those with ulterior motives.

Only a year after Voldemort's rebirth---and mere months from the last strange incident at the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic (yet another wow-it's-Potter-and-he's-the-hero situation, thought Snape darkly)---a strange student from Canada, of all places, says that she and her father have moved to England (offering no explanation why) and asks to transfer to Hogwarts, where she'll conveniently be only a year behind Harry Potter, the grand and wonderful boy-who-lived. Everything about it was too much of a coincidence, Snape felt, to be trusted.

Of course, there were explanations for these things. From the way the girl's eyes had gleamed when he'd asked her about the magical abilities of her parents, and from the fact that her father had been the only one around when he'd arrived at their household, Snape suspected very strongly that either Aramanth's parents were divorced or she was faking them being divorced quite well. It would explain, at least to a certain extent, why the girl had moved to England---her mother had gotten their old house out of the divorce, and her father had taken her to Europe. Somehow he had acquired a new house upon arriving there---or perhaps he'd had one to begin with...? There were easy ways to forge such things, in any case---

Suddenly a small voice intruded rudely upon his thoughts. "Where are we?" the Aramanth girl asked in her terribly irritating, high-pitched voice.

"Diagon Alley," he snapped.

Her eyes widened a little, presumably in the fear she could not seem to hide or quench. Snape wondered, for the first time, if Amara Aramanth was all right---not physically, but mentally.

"What new supplies will I need?" she was asking now.

Did she expect him to psychically know which ones she had already?

"What do you already have?" he said edgily, with the distinct feeling like he was asking the obvious.

Oh, no, he thought a second after he'd asked it. Prepare for a huge list...

She paused, doubtless mentally going over the contents of her trunk. "I already have a lot of black robes," she said. "And a pewter cauldron, and brass scales, and the like. And I have A History of Magic, and Magical Theory---"

"Stop!" said Snape, gritting his teeth. Aramanth closed her mouth very abruptly. Meanwhile he reached deep into the pockets of his robes for the scrap of parchment, which Dumbledore, as usual foreseeing the problem, had given him.

He withdrew it and handed it to the girl. She stared at it, her eyes widening again. She had the odd habit of doing that, he had noticed. On the paper, in Dumbledore's loopy handwriting, was a list of all the supplies that a fifth-year student who had never attended Hogwarts before would need.

Snape realized, with a sinking feeling, that he was going to have to take her to a great many stores in order for her to get the things that she needed.

It was going to be rather a long day.

**********

"Um, Professor---?" Amara broke off, feeling stupid for having already forgotten the man's name.

"Snape," he replied, gritting his teeth again.

"Do you have a quill?" she asked tentatively.

Looking nettled, Snape reached deep into his pocket and withdrew an enormous eagle-quill, filled to the brim with ink and sealed with a strange cap that must have been made of dragon-hide. He handed it to her.

Amara took the quill and turned to the list, whereupon she began to neatly check off the items that she already had. Snape shot an unnoticed glare in her direction, pondering whether or not he should chastise her for not asking for permission to mark up the list that Dumbledore had so laboriously created. (Well, he admitted to himself, laboriously was not perhaps the right word; the task had been done with only a mere flick of his wand, if truth was to be told.) He decided in the end that it was not worth the trouble. Aramanth probably would not have noticed anyway, so immersed was she in trying to remember her supplies.

"Professor Snape," said Amara suddenly---Snape tried to block out her voice, but was unsuccessful---"where am I going to get all these new things?"

He took the list unceremoniously from her fingers and let his eyes sweep down its contents. To his immense chagrin, only about half of the items looked to be checked off. This, thought Snape, was definitely not in the job description. He was not going to spend his entire evening shopping for a brainless Muggleborn. Especially not when there were potions to be brewed, lesson plans to be created, and a task to be performed. Never mind the fact that the girl probably hadn't brought any money with her.

"At the stores here," he said vaguely as he gestured around at the bustling Diagon Alley around them, an idea creeping into his mind.

She looked doubtful, and her eyes widened again. "But there are so many of them!"

He looked at her suspiciously. "You had stores like these in Canada, did you not?"

"Well---yes---" said Amara, getting strangely confused.

"Well!" said Snape. "It shouldn't be hard then."

Amara found it hard to believe that Snape had gotten a complete character change in a matter of moments. Hearing him say the words in such a congenial tone of voice was unnerving, to say the least. She looked around at the dozens of stores around them, all packed tightly together. She did not like her new professor at all, and didn't trust him not to leave her alone in a place like this, where she would get lost in a heartbeat.

"You won't---leave me here?"

His eyes sparkled, and she was frankly startled at how much different it made him look. His expression was positively demonic.

"Only after I show you the train platform," he said, and as if he'd suddenly reminded himself of what he'd originally set out to do, he began striding rapidly away.

Amara followed after him, struggling a little to keep out with his brisk strides. Finally she simply broke out into a trot. He didn't seem to notice.

And then, so suddenly that she very nearly ploughed into him, he drew to a halt. He shot her an extremely unfriendly look before turning back and pulling out a long, black wand (the color is such a surprise, thought Amara dryly). She watched, curiously, as he pointed it at the seemingly normal building in front of them and muttered, "Acclaro!"

The wall slowly parted, its long sides sliding silently away from each other to form a thin doorway. Snape slipped inside, and she followed after him. She heard the walls closing back behind once they had gotten safely inside.

Looking up around at her new surroundings, however, Amara saw that they weren't inside. Instead they were outside---outside in a world that most certainly was not Diagon Alley. Amara found herself reeling, into an enormous and very thorny bush, presumably to hide the entrance they had just come out of. The fact that it was hidden, as well as the fact that she could hear cars roaring from a hidden highway up ahead of them, assured her that they had come back into the Muggle world.

Tossing a glance behind her, she saw that the wall they had just come through now looked as impenetrable as the stone it was made of.

Having familiarized herself with her surroundings, she looked up at Snape, and was immediately surprised as his expression. It was strange, closed, and a bit worried. Amara followed his gaze apprehensively to a cluster of people not far away, people that she had somehow missed in her inspection of their surroundings.

Oh, dear.

There were about five of them---not including, Amara saw, a baby strapped into a baby carriage---and they were all gaping dubiously at her and Snape. A woman, a man, and three small children. By their plain clothing, and their expressions, she knew at once that they were Muggles, and that they had all seen her and Snape appear out of the parting wall. Like them, they were hidden behind the thick bushes loosely lining the wall; and it was a good thing, for she didn't know what the Muggle public around the streets and stores of downtown London would do if they saw five people gaping openly at two strange people dressed in cloaks.

She wondered what Snape would do. Already he had his wand out, but a Memory charm was what the situation needed, and you couldn't exactly cast the charm on five people at once. This same problem seemed to have occurred to him as well, for he was staring at them with his mouth hung slightly agape, his normal dignified stance falling to pieces. It was almost comical.

Then he seemed to pull himself together. "Vulgus petrificus totalus!" he cried, pointing his wand not at one particular member of the group, but swaying it from side to side so that it encompassed all of them. Amara watched in astonishment as a thick, flat wave of blue-white magic shot out of his wand in a triangular shape, blasting the group of Muggles. Their eyes grew even wider as their legs and arms snapped together under the force of the full body bind, and they fell to the ground. Even the baby, who had been crying loudly from its carriage, fell silent.

In a flash Snape was at their sides, casting Memory charms as quickly and effortlessly as though they were simply lighting spells. Amara's mouth fell open a little in amazement---she had never seen someone perform such complicated magic with such ease. It cast Snape in an entirely new light.

When he was done with the memory charms, he cast a Finite incantatem upon them all, and all of the full body binds vanished at once. Amara, who had by now drawn up to Snape's side, watched the Muggle's reactions to see how severe the memory charms had been.

They looked dazed and confused, staring from her to Snape. He quickly began talking to them.

"You are just experiencing the after-effects of an unfortunate gas accident." Snape was lying through his teeth, and by the look on his face, he was evidently immensely enjoying it. A wry smile touched Amara's lips. "You may feel a bit fuzzy and confused," continued Snape, "but these symptoms will soon dissipate with time." (My god, thought Amara to herself. He sounds like a salesman showing off a new drug!) "Go to your home, get a few hours of bed rest, and you will feel fine." He flashed them a rather eerie-looking grin of yellow teeth. "Off you go."

They turned, unsteady on their now wobbly legs, and walked like zombies out of the bushes.

Amara looked at Snape. The instant the Muggles had disappeared, his old self had reappeared. It molded over him, transforming him from the happy salesman back into the cold, heartless man that he had been only minutes before, and covering his eyes with the icy sloughs of chain and mail that she had previously taken for granted. It was only now that she saw, with a cold turn of her heart, that the his black, fathomless, and emotionless eyes---more like holes than eyes, really---did by no means reflect his true self, as most people's eye's did; rather, they were a husk, an impenetrable sort of protective covering. He did not use his icy, thoughtless demeanor not as a vindictive way to make those around him feel bad, as she had first rashly and foolishly assumed. It was more than that. It was his protection, his way of hiding his true self from a world that had turned on him.

For the first time, Amara found herself really and truly interested in the man before her. Just how had the world turned on him? she wondered. What had he done to deserve such venomous reprisal? And what, beneath that cold exterior, was he really like on the inside?

Listen to yourself, thought Amara harshly. You sound like you're writing some kind of sentimental novel! This isn't a novel; this is Snape, the professor from hell, and if you let your guard down he'll crush you into powder.

She wondered if he knew of the thoughts spiraling rampantly through her mind; even worse, she wondered if they were plastered on her face for all to see. But she must have been at least a little subtle in her contemplations, for there was no sign of any real expression on his face, apart from the sneering one he always seemed to wear.

Without even a single word of the strange episode that had just passed, Snape slid through the bushes and into the Muggle world, leaving the wordless understanding that she was to follow him. She complied, having not nearly as easy a time as Snape had had with the bushes (they got terribly snagged in her robes, and she had to pause for a moment to detach them) but in the end managing to come out right beside him at the edge of a crowded street.

To her surprise, he seemed to have no intentions whatsoever of either crossing it or going down it either way. He simply stopped, glaring down at her with an unmistakably impatient expression.

"Yes, Professor?" asked Amara, somehow feeling that it was the appropriate question to ask even though he had demanded nothing of her.

Snape raised his eyes, and following them, she saw him looking at a tall, regal-looking building a ways across the street. "That's King's Cross," he said, sounding almost bored, as if he had seen the building far too many times in his lifetime. "On September first, you go there to platform nine- and-three-quarters, to the train that will take you to Hogwarts."

Amara nodded. So that's what this little escapade was about, she thought. All he had to do was show me that building over there, and he was done. Leaving me, of course, to find all the shops in Diagon Alley on my own.

She got the feeling that he wasn't telling her everything---Platform nine- and-three-quarters did not sound like any ordinary type of train platform. But in the thirty or so minutes she'd been around Snape, she'd come to sense his limits, and she knew enough of them to know that it would be unwise to voice any questions of this nature.

Nevertheless, she did have questions of a different sort, which pleaded to be answered. "Professor," she began, taking a nervous breath. His black eyes regarded her silently, curiously. (Ah! Curiosity! thought Amara. An non-negative emotion!) "That Vulgus spell you did back there... with the body bind," she continued. "What was it?"

If truth was to be told, she had hardly heard in all of her four years of schooling of any spells that could be cast so easily upon more than one person at a time, and she rather wished to know what it was.

Again, those black eyes regarded her, examining her with not such a strong malevolence as before. His voice, however, said otherwise. "You mean to say that you've never heard of the Multiple-Castings spell in all of year years of magical schooling?" he said, very scornfully.

"No," admitted Amara, keeping her voice carefully adamant yet with a submissive overtone. It was a sort of experiment, to see how he would react. "I haven't."

He watched her, carefully, but Amara kept her face emotionless, and finally he seemed to decide that there would be no harm in telling her. "It allows, obviously, the caster to put a charm or spell upon more than one person or animal at the same time," he replied in his quiet voice. "It is difficult to cast; that's why I used such a simple curse with it. If I had tried five Memory charms all at once the spell probably wouldn't have succeeded, and even if it had it would have completely drained me of energy."

She nodded. It was what she had assumed was the answer.

Seeing that she had no more stupid questions to ask of him, he gave her his departing instructions. "Go back through Diagon Alley the way we came, find the flowerpot, and get back to your house," he ordered. "Don't fiddle around with it. You can go back to get the supplies you need at a later day. Tomorrow will work fine."

She did not bother telling him that she had church the next day with her father, and that it was Open House. It something they both needed to attend, since they were so new to the entire continent and certainly were not familiar with the church. She probably wouldn't be back until five o'clock in the evening.

He wouldn't have understood.

Still, she wondered very much why he didn't want her to just shop for her supplies then and there, on the other side of the wall. It would have been infinitely more convenient.

"Remember," he added as he slid back through the bush, just before he Apparated, "Acclaro is the spell to open the wall."

"I'll be able to do magic?" said Amara, surprised. "Even though I'm underage?"

Snape nodded. "So many people need to perform entrance spells around Diagon Alley that the Ministry doesn't normally chastise underage witches and wizards for casting them."

Amara was glad he'd told her of the spell and the rule, feeling that she'd never have remembered otherwise. How very strange England was.

"Professor Snape," said Amara suddenly. He stopped, and she saw that he had been a mere moment away from Apparating. "You left your quill."

For a moment, surprise seemed to flash through his face that he hadn't remembered it. He held out his fingers, and she laid the huge black sheath into his hand. He let his fingers curl gently around it, as if it had suddenly become a long-treasured possession. Then he looked at her a last time, his eyes glittering, and raised his wand. Suddenly, in a brilliant flash of light and whirling black robes, he was gone.

She was abruptly and acutely aware of how alone his absence made her feel. That was one of the strange things about Amara; if she had been around a person for a long time, even one she didn't like, she felt very lonely afterwards . . . She couldn't imagine how terrible she would feel after she had to leave her father . . .

Pushing the feelings aside, she had just taken out her wand so she could perform the Acclaro spell when she noticed something.

This something was her vision. She could hardly see a thing, now that she wasn't looking at Snape, who had previously always been in close range. She had forgotten about her glasses, which she had been clutching tightly in her left hand throughout the entire time---broken, thought Amara bitterly, because Snape didn't want to fix them... I'll have to wait a week until September first, when I'm at Hogwarts . . .

Lifting them up, she could only stare at them.

Eyes widening, she saw that they were completely repaired: frame, lens, and all.

Who did that? she wondered. I certainly didn't, and if someone on the street did I definitely would have noticed...

She realized, dimly, that Snape had to have fixed them. He was too proud to just fix them when I was looking, she thought. It would have spoiled that selfish, careless look he seems to cultivate. So he had to do it when I wasn't paying attention... when I wouldn't notice.

For a moment she just stood there, staring at them, in total and utter disbelief. He did this, she thought. For me.

She stood there a moment, this thought lingering in her mind. She held on to it, cherishing it. She had been so sure that Snape hated her...

She slid the glasses lightly back onto her face, and was relieved as the world slipped back into focus. Then she raised her wand, concentrated, and murmured, "Acclaro!"

Relieved to see a long crack appear in the wall, as both of its sides diverged, Amara squeezed herself through, back into the magical world.