"You're a hard one to find, you know that?"

Marian looked up and found Harry Potter standing over her, wearing an expression of wry amusement. It had been nearly a week since the Quidditch practice, and she hadn't seen hide nor hair of him since then.

"It's not like I'm trying to hide," the woman muttered, closing a copy of Magical Miscreants Throughout History.

Harry smiled and plunked down on the narrow bench across from her. His former teacher looked at him warily, then folded her hands primly on the wooden table. His smile slipped. "Have I done something?"

Marian jerked, then slid her hands off the table. "No! At least, nothing that I know of. It's these classes. They've got be started on second year texts, and there's still so much that I haven't read from first year, supplemental materials and what not." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's hell playing catch-up. I'm too old for this."

Harry laughed, the sound unchanged from his boyhood, with the exception of a little bass. "Don't worry, you'll do fine. Anyway, let us know, and Hermione'd probably role out all her notes that are packed up. She never throws anything away."

"Gods be praised," she muttered, scrubbing a hand through her hair. "So, what's up with you, lately? I've been hearing stories about you facing a darklord or something. What's that all about?"

Harry sighed and started in on his tale. After nearly an hour, he sat back. "So?"

Marian blinked, and whistled through her teeth. "Damn, and I thought I had it tough in school." She leaned across the wooden table. "So you're not like Jesus, or anything like that?"

"No!" A loud "SHHHHH!" met his outburst, and Harry leaned forward until his forehead was nearly touching hers. "At least, I hope not."

"The way the keep talking about the 'savior of the wizarding world', I was getting nervous. What would people think if they knew I'd failed the Messiah on his fifth grade English midterm?"

The two stared at each other in dead seriousness. Then the corner of Marian's mouth began to turn up, and Harry's shoulders shook the slightest bit. A moment later the two of them were laughing into their arms, trying to avoid the librarians anger.

Harry recovered first, fixing his glasses. "So, anything else you'd like to know?"

Marian looked around conspiratorially. "You weren't the one that put the Hop Weed in the soup last night, were you?"

The young wizard laughed, drawing an irritated look from Madam Pince. The night before some adventurous soul had snuck into the kitchens and placed an entire bag of Hop Weed in the minestrone soup. The result was the majority of the students and staff jumping about like jack rabbits while those not affected laughed. The single fact that neither Fred nor George had taken the soup was enough to paint them guilty in Harry's eyes. "No."

Marian raised one eyebrow. "But you know who did, don't you?"

It had never failed to surprise him in fifth grade, how easily she was able to ferret out the truth. "Maybe."

She reached across the table, grabbing his hands. "Come on! Please tell me?" She started to snicker. "I cant get the image of Snape jumping around like a demented Easter Bunny looking like murder out of my head!"

Harry joined her. That morning the potion's master had promised Harry's class, and every other if rumor held true, that he was personally going to oversee the punishment of the perpetrators. The sheer malice in his voice when issuing that threat was enough to make Harry hope that the twins were never caught. "A lot of people know who did it," he said finally. "Why don't you ask them?"

"Because they see an adult, and wont tell me squat!" Marian stood and walked around the table, falling to her knees before the surprised boy. "Please tell me, please?"

Harry looked around and saw that the redhead's antics had caught the attention of several people, some of whom were watching the avidly. "Fine!" he whispered fiercely. "Just get up off the floor!"

Marian stood as if nothing had happened, brushing off her robs and settling back in her chair. "All right, spill!"

"Fred and George Weasley," Harry muttered into the table, the words barely a breath of air.

"Those twins?"

He nodded. A brief and terrible thought passed through his head. This was actually Professor Snape, using polyjuice or some other spell to see who knew anything.

"Remind me to get them a Christmas card."

Severus Snape, twenty year member of the International Potion Masters Guild, considered by many to be the best maker of legal (and illegal) brews in the British Isles, fifteen year potion's master at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was furious. The more the thought about it, the further he went beyond furious and into the realm of murderous. And the source of that fury was staring at him squarely in the face, around Professor Sinastra's pointy head, and looking at him with an expression that could only be called….

Amusement.

The insufferable woman had the nerve to look puzzled at his expression of outrage. "What?" she asked, her voice as guileless as a child's. "I just complemented you on your jumping yesterday," she continued, twirling spaghetti on her fork. "Nothing to be ashamed of."

Snape ground his teeth. Last night's episode at dinner was something he'd rather not have happened, and failing that, have obliterated from his memory. With Hogwart's anti-apparation wards in place, he'd been reduced to hopping his way to his quarters in full few of the students and staff.

"Quite right, my dear boy," Dumbledore's voice carried over the table. "I don't believe I've had an evening that entertaining in some time. In fact," the headmaster continued, " I believe it was rather good for us all. We wizards usually take ourselves too seriously."

That interfering, annoying, little- Severus stopped himself. There was no use getting upset with the Headmaster, he'd discovered over the years. No matter what you called the old goat it went right by him, and afterwards you were offered a lemon drop and told how bad such high levels of angst were for the heart.

" Still," Snape countered, wondering how the rest of the table could miss the grinding of his teeth. "Using a controlled substance such as Hop Weed is dangerous. Need I remind you, again, that in large doses it works as a hallucinogenic."

"So that explains why I thought you looked like Tigger," the woman muttered to herself, then chewed thoughtfully on a stewed mushroom. As much as Severus wanted to know exactly what a Tigger was, he'd be damned to the abyss and back before he asked her.

"Be that as it may, Severus, no serious damage was done. I believe a firm talking to and a deduction of house points will be enough to deter the culprits when they're caught."

"The culprits!" Snape tightened his hand on his fork. "Is it obvious to anyone else that we have the Weasley twins to thank for this prank, and half the others that occur throughout the school?"

The slight nods that met his proclamation were hardly balm to his wounded pride. No matter what they thought, there were few professors outside himself that would do much to the meddling redheads.

They were too afraid of what the retaliation might be.

"Well, isn't someone in a state of high dungeon? It's two days to Halloween. They're just kids, for Christ sake. Calm down."

Severus could hear his bones creaking as he slowly turned his head to face the woman again. "A holiday is no excuse for destructive behavior." The words were clipped and careful, a tone that the rest of the professors recognized. Severus Snape was officially at the end of his tether, and dangerously close of loosing it entirely. "Hop Weed is highly regulated for very good reasons, none the least of which is it's narcotic properties. What if someone had been allergic? I highly doubt the severe stomach cramps and vomiting delivered on the poor soul before death would be worth the entertainment value. Do you?"

"But no one was allergic," Marian countered, leaning nearly across Pince's plate. " I don't even think you'd care either way. You're just embarrassed that we got to see you hopping through the Great Hall like a jackrabbit." She leaned back into her chair and took up her goblet. "You should grow up, professor, and take the embarrassment like a man."

Snape lost what little color he had. "What in the name of Merlin's festering forelocks-"

"Lady, professor, perhaps you should calm-"

"- do you know about taking anything 'like a man'?" Snape rode over the Headmaster's interruption. "Unless you have ballocks hidden somewhere under that robe, I suggest you shut your gob, before I do it for you."

Marian's eyes glittered. " I know enough to shut up and stop whining like a little bitch-"

"I didn't know you could stop being what you are!"

"Listen, jackass-"

"Silencio!"

Severus turned and stared dumbfounded at the headmaster, noting that Marian did the same, hand to her throat. It was then that he noticed the Great Hall was far quieter than usual, the students closest to the professor's table staring with open-mouthed astonishment. He couldn't believe it, he'd actually gotten into a shouting match with the gods cursed woman.

"There now," Dumbledore was saying as he wiped his mouth with a napkin. "Perhaps both of you should take some time to cool down, before things are said that will be regretted on both sides." He fixed both adults with a glare that cooled some of Snape's anger. The glare softened before being directed at the thirty or so students that were watching the exchange.

Severus curled his fingers into his palms until the nails were biting into the skin. They remained that way for long moments, refusing to listen to the simple directive to unfurl and go through the motions of eating for a while longer until he could slither off and cast a few Unforgivables on dust bunnies.

"Now, perhaps it would be best for us all to finish our dinner." With that, Dumbledore picked up his fork and knife and began cutting into his helping of ham, asking opinions all around on the virtues of soap and water to correct certain behavior.

Thus missing the bird that was flipped at his back.

How dare… what is she… how could… Severus couldn't even form the thoughts necessary to describe his anger, so he did the only thing he could.

He kicked her.

Marian's eyes bulged out of her head, and she swung around in the middle of an all out tirade, which slowed down once there was no sound. Infuriated even further, raised her hand, no doubt to repeat her gesture at the headmaster, and stared, stunned. Internally, Snape began laughing his head off, and felt his fingers uncurl enough to pick up his fork and continue eating. Watching someone getting their just deserts was always satisfying. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the woman passing one hand over the other several times slowly, then with speed. A choking sound escaped her, then she glared at the headmaster in fury.

The middle finger on her right had was missing.

Neither Harry, Ron, nor Hermione could believe what they were seeing. Watching Snape and Lockhart go at it, usually with Snape passing guarded comments and Lockhart completely oblivious was one thing. Watching Snape glare at someone with the kind of irritation and anger that was usually reserved for Harry himself was something else entirely. And unlike Lockhart, Ms. Elvbow was holding her own, if the alternating flushing and blanching of the professor was any indication.

"What do you think she's saying to him?" Ron asked when Snape froze, then leaned almost completely over Sinistra's plate.

Harry just shook his head and strained to listen to what was being said. All the other professors looked as if they might burst out laughing any second.

"-like a little bitch-"

"-what you are!"

Those words carried clearly, not just to the Gryffindor trio, but to those at the heads of the other tables. Now they were staring at the two adults as well.

"Uh-oh," Ron muttered as professor Dumbledore stepped into the argument. Both Snape and Ms. Elvbow looked like they wanted to say more, but the hand at Marian's throat, and the fact that she appeared to be shouting without sound, was enough.

"I wonder what they were saying."

Hermione shrugged. "Probably something that wasn't very nice."

Ron rolled his eyes. "I know that. I want to know what."

Harry ignored his friends and watched as Snape, looking too pleased by half, started eating again as Marian waved one hand over the other. She looked from the potions master to the headmaster several times, then stood.

Carefully, too carefully for Harry, she made her way from the professor's table and to the Ravenclaw table. She tapped on blond boys shoulder and after a few moments of gesturing got was she was looking for: two pieces of parchment and a quill.

Ron was thumping Harry hard on the shoulder. "Look at that," he said, eyes swinging from professor Snape eating seemingly unaware to Marian writing. When she was done with one she slapped the parchment down on the table, and started on another one. Perhaps five minutes went by before she was done. Harry noticed that by now, more than half the Great Hall was watching with curiosity.

With a satisfied smirk and a flourish, Marian folded both pieces of parchment and headed back to the professor's table. One she practically threw in Snape's plate, the other she handed to the Headmaster with a bow. That done, she walked down the center aisle of the Hall.

The letter she'd given to Snape was snatched almost before it landed, and hidden in the man's lap. Harry knew that anyone who wasn't sitting as close as he was wouldn't have been able to see it. The Headmaster however was not to shy. He unfolded the parchment and held it a bit away from his face, as though his glasses weren't up to the task of reading the letter. Dumbledore's laugh didn't slow her a bit. " I don't believe I'm quite that flexible, my dear," he called after her, and from where he was sitting Harry could see his eyes glittering maniacally. "But I believe it might be possible with a little practice, were I so inclined."

The Great Hall burst out laughing, followed by conversation as the students started in on desert. Harry was focused on the potions master, whose eyes were currently in his lap. The dark haired man blanched, then flushed, then blanched again before a puff of smoke curled up from his lap.