September 1

With the setting sun came the shrill whistly of the Hogwarts Express, and there was a flutter of last-minute activity as the teachers took their places in the Great Hall, assembled on either side of Dumbledore. Severus found his chair near the middle of the table, and frowned towards the end, trying to catch a glimpse of the dark-haired Aislinn who had developed a disturbing habit of popping up wherever he was. He'd still not managed to work out who she was, and he suspected she knew that it was beginning to drive him marginally insane. And he suspected that she was enjoying it. Twice he'd tried to trick her into revealing her identity by asking questions, but the little vixen had outwitted him both times, always seeming to know instinctively when he was prowling for answers. She'd left a number of clues lying around, and much to his irritation, it had taken him three days to realise that she was doing it on purpose, offering him a tantalizing hint. He had made his first discovery at lunch one day, when she made a comment that had left him certain of her age-- twenty-seven it would seem, and he had gone straight back to his office to find class lists from his first years teaching at Hogwarts, but there was no Aislinn and no Ichalia. That evening, her subtle, off-handed remark had led him to believe that she was Slytherin, though he was certain she would have remembered her if she had been. A day later, though, he found himself wondering if she was actually a Ravenclaw who had been a student at the same time he was. Then she led him to believe that she was a Gryffindor who had graduated maybe five years ago; and then he thought perhaps she had been one of the students who had visited Hogwarts during the Triwizard tournament. He had finally devided she was leading him along, and enjoying his chasing of hints that were no more hints than what Dumbledore had said.

And, if he were entirely truthful, he was intrigued by her, even as she drove him to the brink of distraction. He couldn't remember the last time anyone was able to befuddle him as thoroughly as she had, and he was quite enjoying the challenge on some level. But he still wanted to know who she was, and it irked him that it was the beginning of the term now and he was no more sure of her identity than he had been a week ago. He watched her as she talked to the other teachers, lively and animated, her hands gesturing expansively as she elaborated on some point that had Flintwick in tears from laughter. From the way she was beaming, Severus assumed that laughter was the desired reaction to whatever she was saying. His eyes lingered on her for a moment more.

Despite his overall lack of success in discerning who she was, he had noted a few more things about her. For one, she was not quite so tall as he had originally thought; she simply had a penchant for shoes with a three to four inch heel on them that made her seem to tower. Without the shoes, though, she still came very close to looking him in the eye, which was almost unnerving. Few men looked Severus Snape in the eye, and he'd never known a woman tall enough to do so. He had also found that her eye color seemed to change from day to day. They ranged from an enchanting shade of peacock blue to nearly black to almost silver to a shade evocative of midnight. Whatever color they were, though, they sparkled constantly, except when she didn't feel well. This he had stumbled onto quite by accident, as one morning her eyes had been that lovely blue laced with just a smidge of green and shimmering like the ocean, and a few hours later they appeared clouded and hard as iron. She had admitted that she had a splitting headache, and, in a fit of altruism, or something like it, he had brewed her a subtly calming potion that could be added to a cup of tea, and he'd sat with her while she drank it. As she took the cup from him and sipped so trustingly, he immediately found himself thinking that he could provide her with a tea laced with Veritasserum, but it seemed simply wrong to betray her trust so, and for no reason other than to satisfy his own curiousity.

He had also noted, in some distant portion of his mind that noticed such things, that she was stunningly beautiful. How he had failed to notice it before was beyond him, but four days after he had left her in the infirmary, the afternoon she sat sipping the potion-laced tea he had brewed for her headache, it had suddenly hit him that she was extraordinarily beautiful. He justified his dismal lack of observation by telling himself that he had first met her with her hair hanging around her face and sitting in an unglorified heap atop a pile of rubbish. He insisted that there was no way he could have known that those volumous blue velvet robes concealed a curvaceous body that had shocked him two evenings ago when he found her and Minerva talking over a glass of something that looked suspiciously like whiskey to his eye that was so untrained in these things. And she had a smile that was so bright that it outshone the sun. Perhaps, a voice in the back of his mind suggested, she is not so very beautiful after all. Perhaps she simply acts like a beautiful woman, and therefore becomes beautiful. That was a thought worth mulling over, and he had done so, at length, over a glass of sherry. After all, she was too tall to look entirely feminine, and her nose was rather small, giving her something of a child-like appearance half the time. Her face was certainly not the model of ideal beauty-- it was too round, and she was always a bit flushed as though she'd just run through the halls. And, if he were entirely honest, there were lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, which again made him wonder how old she was, anyway. And that hair of hers... the first several times he'd seen her, it had been up (not withstanding the very first encounter, when it obviously had been up but did not survive her fall nearly as gracefully as she had) but when he did finally come across her with her hair down, he was surprised that it was not as silky as he'd first thought. She had enough hair to make three wigs out of, and she had laughed and told him that she wore it up because it was the only way she could trap it into order. He believed her after seeing the wild cascades of curls that spilled over her shoulders and to her waist, and he'd very nearly laughed when she batted it out of her way one day with the indignant accusation that it was attacking her. None of this took awy from her beauty, though, only made it curious to him, that someone who, while attractive, could hardly be considered the ideal of beauty and yet held eyes wherever she went as surely as did a Veela.

The doors of the Great Hall suddenly burst open, startling Severus out of his thoughts, and he turned his attention to the students entering the Great Hall, filing in and separating to their tables. He smiled tightly to the Slytherin table as the students took their seats, and noted with some pleasure that a few of the Gryffindors were looking askance at him. He had spent long years cultivating a reputation that preceeded him every year. He had to do very little now to keep the students convinced that he was cruel and heartless. His first years were always the recipient of a great many detentions from him, and few of them ever forgot that he was fast to award detention and fast to deduct points from a House, and that fear often lingered with them through their years at Hogwarts. The din in the Hall reached a high level as the returning students found their seats and greeted their classmates. If there was one thing that never ceased to surprise him, it was the noise that students were capable of. Severus had always been quiet, as a boy, as a teenager and as a man, so he could never understand how students could be so loud. He resisted the urge to massage his temples.

A sudden hush came over the Hall, and the doors swung open again, admitting a double line of first year students. Severus caught himself shaking his head slightly; every year they looked a little younger to him. Some day, they were going to come in in strollers, and it wasn't going to particularly surprise him. He sat through the sorting ceremony, marking with interest who went to Gryffindor and who to Slytherin and noting with half an eye the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. And, he kept Miss Ichalia in his peripheral vision, trying to discern a favoritism towards one house over another. If there was more enthusiasm for anyone, he thought it was for the students who looked the most frightened. When the sorting was over, Minerva tapped her goblet with her spoon to catch everyone's attention, and Dumbledore stood to address students and faculty. The first announcements were what were expected, welcome to the new students and keep out of the Dark Forest and don't hex each other in the corridors between classes. All of this went fairly quickly, giving Severus a moment to study his new Slytherin charges. As head of their house, he knew that he had to be alert for possible trouble from them. And he could already tell that one of the girls was going to be a problem; not five minutes into the Headmaster's speech, she was making eyes at two of the boys sitting across from her. Severus made a mental note to have a chat with her.

"...and, as you can plainly see, we have new teachers to welcome to Hogwarts this year. First, I would like to introduce our newest divination teacher, whom some of you seventh years may remember from your own first experience at Hogwarts. Professor Ichalia!" Severus' head turned back to Aislinn who had stood and was waving to a girl at the far end of the Ravenclaw table who was waving furiously at her. At the back of the Hall, a murmur was slipping through, and Severus strained his ears to hear what they were saying. The murmur mounted, and finally he could pick a single name out of the whispered rush: Hannah. Hannah Carlisle. That was the consensus. The students, apparently, assumed that Miss Carlisle had married, and that was why she was now Mrs. Ichalia, and for a moment, Severus considered that. But, she'd made no mention of a husband, and wore no ring on her left hand, and he had not heard of a Mr. Ichalia living anywhere on the premesis. It was a swift conclusion on his part that she was not married, and it was just as wel that it was swift, for realisation slapped against him, beating all other thoughts out of his head. Hannah Carlisle. He did remember her, and his eyes snapped back to Aislinn. No, Hannah. Whoever she was. She had been one of the banes of his existence, grating on his nerves very nearly as badly as that Potter brat did. As he watched her, he mentally subtracted years, and replaced her velvet blue robe with a simple black one, and let her hair fall in messy tangles around her face. Tangles that were forever getting caught in the fire under her cauldron. How many times had he been forced to put out flames because that little dunderhead couldn't remember to bring a ribbon or something to class? He had threatened to cut her hair all off the fourth time it happened, and after six times, he had taken to having the detention slip already written out. By the time she was a second year, he'd learned to have a string for her, which he dropped unceremoniosly on her desk every day, and for which she always thanked him as though he was showing her some kindness. She had been a Gryffindor, and a teacher's worst nightmare-- a quick mind that she used for everything in the world except lessons and studying, a mischievous streak a mile wide, and an mouth that never closed. Even when she was in detention, she'd been prone to chattering to him, or mumbling as she read.

Merlin's beard. That girl was a teacher now. God help them all.