Chapter 4
Year 2018 Common Era
"Li? Ready to explore again?" Adrienne stood at the foot of her twin sister's bed, and to Lianna's bleary morning-eyes, showed as nothing more than a fuzzy splotch of darkness against the light colours of her room. Flopping her head back down, Lianna gathered her strength and surged out of bed, rolling and flipping her legs out to catch her as she fell out of bed. She stood up a moment, letting the air around her settle back down to normal colours, then dressed, followed her sister to the table, ate the breakfast the House Elves provided, and went to stand at the door.
"Ri, mama said that we're to be careful with the corridors today- it's midsummer's; do you really think it's a good idea to be going exploring today?" Ri's eyes flashed, and Li inwardly smiled at her sister's fire.
"Lianna Meridian Granger, we are eleven years old, and have lived in this castle for six years now. We know how to get around without any trouble. Now stop being a worry wart, and let's go!" Ri stormed through the wall.
Li sighed melodramatically, following her sister out into the cold castle corridor.
Once she was out and exploring, Li soon dismissed her trepidation. The girls traipsed through corridors that only appeared when you swore at them, and through doors that only opened if you stroked them sweetly; roaming the castle was just so interesting: there was always a new room to explore, a new corridor to run down, a new staircase to a new tower. Lianna thought sometimes that the castle just enjoyed giving them something to do, enjoyed entertaining them.
They crossed paths with a few ghosts, who smiled and waved as the girls rushed down the corridors. The portraits loved chattering with the girls also, and they always knew all the gossip from the castle.
Adrienne suddenly stopped in front of a door. Lianna bumped into the back of her, before turning to look at the door as well.
It was a door that evoked fear in them, even now. The tall mahogany door with its poor, chipped handle that was scratched from many a collision with the wall, was one that terrified the girls, if only because it housed the man they feared above all else- even Filch wasn't as scary as this man.
Ri turned to look at Li, and as one, they turned and fled. They rushed right back to their rooms, to see their mother sitting at the table, waiting for them.
"Good exploration today?" The girls sat down at the table, nodding.
"We found a tower that overlooks the lake. The squid was nowhere to be seen- must have still been in bed."
"I didn't think it did go to bed," Li added, "but it wasn't there, so I guess it must. And we found a new secret corridor- Sir Caddogan scared a dragon out of its picture- well, he sort of shouted at it, and it turned to chase him- and we asked the portrait to open, and there was a passage! So we followed it. It came out in the Library, in the restricted section, right at the back. We went out to Madam Pince, and she looked really angry,"
"But we asked if she had the latest Ars Alchema for you, so she went and found it for you- here it is." Ri produced the periodical from the inside of her robes, "so we kept exploring, and we ended up in the dungeons, and decided to come home."
Hermione raised an eyebrow at Ri's last statement- "did you end up at Snape's door, again?"
Both girls went a little pink and looked down, casting guilty glances at each other.
"We didn't mean to," Ri finally looked up, "We just sort of ended up there. You know we're terrified of him." Lianna nodded emphatically at her sister's statement. Hermione sighed.
"He will be one of your teachers this year, you do know that? And I'm almost certain that he can smell fear." Hermione made a little face before continuing, "So I think we'll have to start getting you used to being around him- I want him to see that Grangers are not to be intimidated." Hermione's face was hard, and Lianna nodded at the little spiel. Adrienne looked at her mother, and at her sister. She sighed, and nodded, too.
"I think that it's time for you to start learning Potions form the master, darlings!" Hermione's face lit up mischievously, as if this were a great joke. The girls leaned in to hear her plan.
~*~
"You're joking me, surely." Snape's face was a mask of disgust. Minerva smiled whilst he couldn't see her, enjoying her little joke just as much as Hermione was.
"Now, Severus, do I ever joke with you?"
"No; I don't have a sense of humour, apparently."
"Well, now, do you really want to give away such a wonderful opportunity? The girls will be wonderful students- they're already terrified of you. What more could you want?"
Snape snorted, and glared at Minerva. "A little talent would be nice."
Minerva laughed out loud, for more than an appropriate amount of time. Snape became disgruntled.
"Well? What's so funny?"
"These girls are the daughters of the most advanced witch to ever grace Hogwarts with her presence. I wouldn't worry overmuch about their ability- and they already have their supplies for the beginning of the school year. It's only a couple months, Severus. They won't kill you, I'm sure." Minerva's face clearly showed that there was no choice involved in this- he would be teaching the little Grangers, whether he felt like it or not. A growl escaped his throat, as he turned his back on Minerva.
"Tuesday and Thursday Afternoons. Three O'clock. For two hours. I expect the chits to have a basic grasp of what the subject is about. They will be practical lessons. Now get out."
Minerva smiled as she left, and once she was out of hearing distance, she burst into peals of impish laughter.
~*~
"Ok, mama, we understand. This is the third time you've told us. We've read the books twice; we'll be fine! Now can we go?" Lianna was desperate to get her sister and herself out from under her mother's watchful eyes, where they could fret properly. It was twenty to three, Tuesday afternoon.
"Ok." Hermione said grudgingly, "Off with you, then. If he gives you more trouble than you can handle, tell me."
"Yes, mama," the girls chorused, and romped out the door.
"She worries too much. Aunt Minerva will squish him if he so much as growls at us!" Lianna was in high spirits. Ri seemed a little anxious, but she smiled too.
They arrived at the door they had always shied away from, five minutes ahead of time. Lianna quailed, so Adrienne picked up her hand and knocked firmly. The door opened slowly- by magic, it appeared- and they walked in carefully.
The inside of this room was not what they had expected. It was similar, Adrienne realised, to the Apothecary where they had bought their basic Potions ingredients, with jars of unidentifiable content lined up along every wall, and a locked storeroom behind the large desk at the head of the room. The desks were rather stained, but despite this, there was very little smell in the room. Adrienne surmised that the low temperature might have something to do with this.
Snape was seated at the large desk, and looked up only when Lianna coughed loudly.
"You're here. I suppose I'm going to teach you then, aren't I?" His tone was frosty, and Adrienne fought hard against her instinct to cringe. Instead, she channelled her discomfort into anger, drawing her lips into a thin line, much as Aunt Minerva did.
"Yes, Professor. That is what we are here for, after all."
Snape gave a short, disbelieving bark that may have passed as a laugh from another mouth. "I don't delude myself with pretensions where you are concerned. Your mother probably had ulterior motives for these lessons, though I'm in no place to speculate. We will begin with a forgetfulness potion. The ingredients and formula is on the blackboard,"
And when the girls looked, indeed it was. After reading the first year textbook twice, they had a basic grasp of the potion, also.
Lianna looked up at the dark man, "are we to do this individually, or should we complete one potion between us?" He looked a bit startled, but soon recovered.
"Professor. And you will work individually." Lianna cringed a little, but managed to nod and lit her cauldron flame quickly.
Adrienne collected her ingredients, then set up her cauldron also. She smiled a little at her sister, then submerged herself in the potion.
Snape floated around the room, straightening jars, re-writing labels and shuffling through a little card-box in the corner of the room. He finally came over to look at the work of the girls. Lianna's potion was average, completed as by one who could follow instructions well. Snape set her to bottling the potion. There were always uses for a good forgetfulness potion: it was much more versatile than an obliviate charm. When he looked at Adrienne's potion, he snorted.
"Sir?" Adrienne looked up from the potion she had created, at the face of the man who scared her most.
"Your mother seems to have been teaching you at home. How many times have you brewed this particular potion?" Adrienne was startled at the hidden praise, unintended as it was.
"I have only read the formula of this potion, sir. This is my first attempt at creating it."
Snape snorted, but said nothing more; he waved a hand at her negligently, before stalking off to another part of the classroom to continue his catalogue of his materials. Lianna looked over at her sister, her face asking what the encounter had been about. Adrienne shrugged her off, and bottled her potion.
"We are finished, sir." Lianna spoke, and looked at the clock. They still had fifteen minutes before their tutorial period was over.
Snape looked up, and sneered. "No real potions master- nor student, for that matter- leaves their pots unscrubbed. Clean up, and do the rest of the dishes while you're there." The girls looked disappointedly at the pile of cauldrons that had miraculously appeared in the corner of the room. They set about scrubbing, and only escaped the room some ten minutes after their lesson had officially ended. They left without word. Snape seemed most unperturbed at this.
"I don't think we'll forget to wash our cauldrons again!" Lianna commented as they hurried down the corridors back to their rooms. "My hands will be wrinkly for hours!"
Adrienne smiled indulgently at her sister, "And I believe we'll probably attempt something a little more challenging on Thursday."
~*~
Dinner was an interesting meal, with Snape close-mouthed about the tutorial lesson that all the teachers somehow knew about. Upon realising that Snape would reveal nothing, the teachers began drilling the girls intently on their lesson. With no pre-planning, the girls hadn't had time to corroborate stories, nor to agree on what to reveal and what to keep to themselves. Surprisingly, the teachers found that they were just as close-mouthed as their enigmatic tutor.
"Was it as scary as you'd thought?" Aunt Minerva asked Lianna, after pudding when most of the teachers had sought the warm confines of their rooms.
"Well, it was a little scary, but there were two of us, and only one of him. And Ri was really strong," Lianna smiled at her sister, who gave her a little grin in return.
"He's not half as intimidating as he pretends to be," Adrienne pronounced firmly, "He's just a big bat with no heart. He'd never kill us, or do anything irreversible. And what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Apparently," she added wryly, looking at her mother. Hermione laughed at her favourite maxim on the lips of her child.
"If you're not careful darling, you'll end up sounding just like me!"
"Oh, don't worry mama, that day's long off. My voice is far too high, although I'm sure that Snape could give me the recipe for a potion to make me older: just so you can check, you understand." The small collection of family at the table laughed, and broke apart for the night.
"Sleep well, Aunt Minerva," the girls cried as they raced off towards their rooms.
"Yes, sleep well, Minerva," Hermione echoed as she sedately followed her children.
~*~
Wednesday was a fiasco.
Adrienne ran into a suit of armour and broke her nose- which would have been alright if Lianna hadn't insisted on trying to fix it, and instead transformed her poor sister's nose into a bunch of whiskers, before promptly forgetting what word she had uttered, making a counter-curse near impossible to find. Madam Pomfrey was rather annoyed, and Hermione was livid.
"A bunch of whiskers, you say? Well, Poppy, I don't know if I have a counter-curse for that. And she doesn't know what she said? Even better!" The twins could hear their mother's voice from the fire around the corner. It was angry, but somewhere Adrienne was sure she heard amusement, under the exasperated tone of her mother's tight words.
"I'll ask Flitwick and Marjory in to help me. We'll see what we can come up with."
Lianna whimpered, and Adrienne absently wondered what her mother's words meant. Surely whatever Lianna had done was reversible? Her mouth hung open, but not because she was surprised: with no nose, she needed her mouth open to breathe. She looked at her whiskers, sprouting from the spot where her nose had been, some minutes prior. They were white and spindly, rather like a cat's. She looked at Lianna, whose whole being was remorseful. Lianna saw the look, misinterpreting it.
"I'm sorry Ri! I never meant for this to happen! I'll never do magic again… I'll never ever do anything again, I'll sit at home and think and hope that I'll never hurt anyone again. I'll hope that I'll die before I hurt anyone again!" And she promptly burst out in tears. Ri nearly laughed, but somehow perceived that it may not be quite appropriate at this moment. She placed a hand on her sister's shoulder. Li picked her face up, reddened and swollen, and jumped, howling, into her sister's arms. Adrienne did laugh then, and Li was soon laughing too, despite her crying eyes.
~*~
Hermione walked into the Hospital Wing, and was immediately struck with the sound of loud laughter. Severus Snape was standing beside Poppy Pomfrey, both of whom were looking curiously around the corner. Hermione cleared her throat, before walking around the corner to see both of her daughters in gales of laughter on the bed; both were holding their stomachs, and each other, and were physically shaking. Ri looked positively ridiculous with a bunch of tapering white whiskers protruding from her face where her nose should have been, and she was having a hard time of breathing and laughing at the same time.
What can I do with these two? Hermione thought, looking at them in despair. Shrugging, she sat down with her hysterical children and joined in their laughter, wrapping arms around both of them. Varimont and Flitwick's eyes joined Snape and Pomfrey's peering around the corner.
"Do you know what's gotten into those three?" Flitwick asked, curious.
"Well, I do believe that it's called hysteria- or it could just be a logical assessment of the situation. It is particularly funny, after all." Marjory answered, smile ghosting around her face.
Snape sniffed with disgust, and Poppy just sighed. The laughter around the corner ended slowly, and Varimont and Flitwick rounded the corner. Hermione was sitting between her two children, arm around each. They looked positively domestic, excluding the bunch of whiskers protruding from the place where Adrienne's nose should have been. Poppy walked in, scanned her wand over the girl's face, announced it to be a transfiguration hex, and walked out, a little huffily. After all, this was a serious problem, and they were just sitting around in hysterics. In a worse situation, the girl could be dead by now! But the anger drained out of her as she turned back to look at the three females sitting on the bed. Perhaps it was a little amusing. Poppy sighed, thought of her own life, and began shuffling around in her storeroom, rearranging. Snape sneered at the corner, and walked back down the stairs. Poppy watched him as he left, and was surprised to see that his gait was defeated, and his shoulders slumped. One of these days, Poppy thought, he's going to get himself in big trouble- him, or someone he loves.
~*~
Ah, the wonder of it all. Another chapter up today.
*kitten