The next day, Severus appeared in her office. He seemed to have a particular liking for moving completely soundlessly and scaring the hell out of people who hadn't seen him come in.
"Dumbledore tells me he told you what I discovered last night," he said, as if he was talking about something completely mundane: a potion he was working on, perhaps. "And I wanted to assure you in person that I will do my best to deal with it."
"Thank you, Severus," she said, holding her panic in check. He looked at her with slightly less than his usual contempt.
"You are welcome, Kaira," he said, gliding out of the room.
He had decided to use her name again, had he? Now that he knew she was important enough to be a target of Voldemort himself? She glared at the space he had occupied a minute ago. Why did he always manage to confuse her?
She was holding herself together well, thought Snape, as he left Bristow's daughter's classroom. Bristow's daughter. He needed to keep on thinking of her as Bristow's daughter. Someone who needed protection. Not as Kaira. Bristow's daughter.
He swooped off down the corridor, spotting a couple of Gryffindors standing talking.
"Ten points from Gryffindor for loitering in the corridors!" he said as he passed.
The two children looked after him furiously, but did not say a word.
He strode into the dungeons, and as he always did when angry, began preparing a potion. He chose a complex potion that would require his full attention until the next class arrived.
"I want a foot scroll on vampires," Kaira told the class, just before she dismissed them. "No complaints," she added as they threatened to moan. "And no excuses. It's a short essay, really, and there should be plenty of information available in the library. And please, no folklore about crosses or special earth."
One student, a Hufflepuff, stuck his hand in the air. She gestured for him to speak.
"Is garlic really a deterrent?" he asked.
"If it's brewed as part of a certain potion, yes. You will find it in your textbooks. Without brewing, garlic can do only a little."
"What about sunlight?"
"Look it up yourselves!" she retorted. "I'm not writing your essays for you. Class dismissed."
She watched them file out, muttering about vampires. She thought she heard Professor Snape's name mentioned, but didn't think any more of it.
Snape's class sensed that he was in a bad mood. Well, perhaps sensed is the wrong word. It would have been very difficult to miss.
"The directions for the potion are on the blackboard. Ingredients at the front. Begin. In silence."
The class filed into their places. Things were precarious enough in Snape's lessons without this kind of mood. No-one spoke and everyone worked carefully trying to make no mistakes as he sat at his desk reading through some papers. They thought, though, that if Snape was at his desk, he wasn't looking at their work and deducting points.
Someone sneezed.
"A point from Ravenclaw," he said, without looking up. "I said silence." The class were impressed: how had he known it was a Ravenclaw who had sneezed? They studied even harder.
Snape was thinking about Kaira... Bristow's daughter. How would Voldemort try to take her? Would he demand that he play a part in it? Perhaps he could plead that Dumbledore was watching him too carefully... Or perhaps he could accept the mission and say that he had failed. Except that failure did not please the Dark Lord very much. It would mean crucio at least. Perhaps he could learn details of the mission and not be a part of it, so that it could be foiled by a seeming coincidence. He would not let Voldemort take her.
Why was he thinking about her so much? There were families out there in danger as well, and all he could think about was her. He kept seeing her face. When he had told her that he would try his best, she had been calm. When he had shown her the mark, she had been frightened, but also there had been hatred in her eyes. When she had tried to thank him for giving her those potions for her classes, she had smiled. She was a fighter. Auror trained. He did not know of any other people who had ever completed training as an Auror and not become one... it did not make sense. Why had she not become an Auror? What was she doing here, of all places?
She's Bristow's daughter, he reminded himself. The man you hated. His daughter. Stop thinking about her.
Snape got up and began to glide around the classroom. He was snide and sharp and cruel and deducted a large number of points, but it did not help. He still kept thinking about the girl. He spotted a student who had never given him trouble struggling to chop some helioweed. It was tough and she kept missing the stem. He went over and took the knife from her hand.
"Here, like this," he told her, chopping one weed. He handed her the knife back, and she copied his technique, doing much better. "Better," he told her. As he stalked off, the girl looked after him, as if surprised that she was still alive, unhumiliated and without having had house points taken from her. He was tempted to turn around and snap at her, but forced himself to wander around some more.
He pronounced several potions satisfactory. Their owners looked at him as if he had gone insane, until he asked them, with one raised eyebrow, if they wished to repeat the lesson in their own time. To several more he sneered a little but not enough to wound.
Kaira lurked outside the potions dungeon as the class Snape had been teaching were dismissed. She overheard them talking.
"What was wrong with Snape today?"
"Yeah, I mean first he forbids us to speak and takes house points from a girl who sneezes, then he's chopping Jane Ginkgo's helioweed for her!"
"He said my potion was satisfactory. That's never happened before!"
She waited for them all to leave, then went into the room.
Snape was sitting at his desk, massaging his forehead.
"Your class thinks that you've gone insane," she told him.
"I know," he replied, wearily.
"You were nice?"
"I was not nice! I am never nice! I was... alright I was nice." Snape answered. "I don't know what came over me. At least I was cruel in the first part of the lesson."
"That's true," she said. "What's bothering you, Severus?"
"You," he replied, candidly.
"Me?" she was astonished.
"What... he... plans to do. I can't stop thinking about if we're going to be able to stop him."
"I didn't know you cared," she mocked gently.
"About you? Don't be ridiculous," he immediately put on his best ferocious glare. "I care that the Dark Lord may be about to kidnap you, I don't care about your personal wellbeing."
"Of course not," she retorted. "No one could accuse you of human feeling."
She stalked out of the dungeon. She didn't really know why she had gone. For reassurances, perhaps, although she should have known that Snape would not give them. Maybe she had just wanted to talk to him. She still wanted to know how he had known her father. Dumbledore had said that he supervised Snape on some early potions work for Voldemort, but she wanted to know more. But she knew that Snape would never tell her.
Once she had gone, Snape went straight into his office, where he pulled out a thick volume on some rare potions and opened it at random. He read it until he had stopped thinking about her. Until he was thinking purely about potions and ingredients.