Title: Good Enough

Author: Sonya

Rating: R

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I don't own. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all associated characters, settings, etc., belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN, etc. Harry Potter and all associated characters, setting, props, etc., belong to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Inc., etc. No copyright infringement is intended, so please don't sue - all you'll get is a really bratty bird and some really spoiled rats.

Spoilers: Up to 'Wrecked' in the Buffyverse, up to "Goblet of Fire" in the Potterverse.

Pairings: Willow/Snape, Hermione/Viktor Krum, Draco/Ginny, Fred/Angelina. Other 'ships to be revealed later. ;)

Summary: Willow attempts to find some closure.

Author's Note: Just a reminder that this story takes place following "Goblet of Fire" - as in, "Order of the Phoenix" and "Half-Blood Prince" never happened. There will be overlaps, but there will also be differences, and there are no intentional spoilers. So, if you've read the book, you'll see some things familiar and some things not. If you haven't read the book and don't want to be spoiled - use your own judgment. If I don't tell you what's my idea and what's from the book, then you're not really being spoiled, right?

It was just as dark when Willow woke the second time, her head heavy but no longer painful, her mouth so dry it felt stuffed with wool. She squinted up into the blackness, frowning, snatches of conversation from the previous evening weaving their way back into her consciousness. It felt as thought a significant amount of time had passed, more than a full night's sleep.

And considering there was much less than a full night left when I fell asleep, that's not good.

"Severus?" she called out experimentally; no one answered.

"Light," she muttered, grimacing and rubbing her eyes. Candles around the room flared as she rolled out of bed and stumbled her way groggily to the bathroom. There she flicked on the cold water and cupped her hands under it, drinking thirstily, shivering faintly at the trickle of cold wetness that spilled over and escaped down her wrist. What was in that stuff he gave me? Several cupfuls later, she finally reached for her toothbrush, blinking up into the mirror and seeing the dark circles under her eyes, her unwashed hair making a tangled copper cloud around her head.

A shower might be a good thought too.

Ten minutes and one hot shower later, she felt somewhat more human, though still unnaturally sleepy.

Note to self; when told 'drink this', ask questions first, not after.

Which is exactly what he said. Poophead.

She yawned, so widely that her ears popped, and glanced over at the clock.

It read about three-quarters of the way from 'you've missed breakfast' to 'if you're not in class, you're late!'.

Willow yelped, and dropped the towel she'd been twisting around her wet hair.

Ohmygodclass! I'm missing my own class! I'm the teacher and I'm late to class.

Maybe if I run I won't –

- clothes. First, need clothes.

She grabbed up the robe that was still slung over her desk.

Yesterday's clothes? Is this still okay? No, it'll probably smell all musty and stuff. So then I'll be late and I'll be smelly and Dumbledore saw that whole mess last night and I am so fired and I'm going to kill Severus for giving me that stupid potion -

- even thought I probably would have been non-functional without it and for pete's sake the closet is right over there, why am I thinking of putting on dirty clothes, it's like, two steps away and green? Should I wear green? Maybe the maroon.

It does not matter if I wear green or maroon or sky-blue-pink with polka dots.

I am so fired. I am so very fired.

Willow threw on green robes and ran.

She expected to find her classroom occupied by impatiently waiting students, Hermione perhaps having pulled out a book to read, Cho probably tapping her quill on her inkpot like she did when she felt time was being wasted. What she found instead were empty desks, and the Headmaster.

"Severus suggested that perhaps your students would benefit from a day off," Dumbledore announced. "Given how rarely he is inclined to such benevolent impulses, I felt it best to humor him. I hope you won't mind."

"I'm fired," Willow blurted out dejectedly, not really processing his words. Her initial rush of adrenaline and bleary shock was wearing off, leaving her panting and flushed from her short run, and feeling a vague sense of impending doom. This is over, isn't it? All of this. It's going to have to end.

"You are?" Dumbledore asked, in a tone of mild curiosity.

"I'm not?" she responded incredulously.

"If you'd prefer to be, I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist that you give at least a month's notice. You signed a contract, Professor Rosenberg," Dumbledore intoned, quite seriously.

"No, I didn't," Willow argued, frowning in puzzlement.

"Didn't you?" Dumbledore asked, frowning right back at her. "You should have. All professors at Hogwarts work under a contract."

"I'm not really a professor," Willow pointed out, feeling a bit like sinking through the floor. But I'm not, and I don't know who I've been thinking I've been fooling here -

- no, wait, I do. That'd be me. I've been doing a very good job of fooling me.

"I mean, this has been -" she paused and swallowed down the lump at the back of her throat. So much more than I deserve or have a right to or . . or should have let myself get used to.

It's been . . a life. A life I'd choose if I had a choice which I don't and it's not seeming likely that I ever will but if I did . . I'd pick this. I'd pick stupid freezing Scotland and staircases that move and house elves and Draco and Hermione and . . and Severus . .

" - it's been . . a lot. Meant a lot. It's been . . an amazing opportunity," Willow finished lamely. That sounds like something you'd write on a college admissions essay.

Which is what I should be getting back to thinking about, I suppose. I should be re-applying to school somewhere.

Maybe somewhere here-ish? Severus .. I think he'd want me to stay. Nearby. I want to stay nearby. I told him I wasn't going anywhere.

But that was last night when I thought chocolate chips could save the world. This is .. now, and awake.

And I don't want to go. I want to kick and scream and cry and not go.

"But I'm not really a professor," she pressed on doggedly. "And . . I know what you said, back in the fall, about having a good imagination and all, but - I mean, Giles - and stuff - stuff that you know for real now - it'd probably be better if I just left. Before parents hear about this. That whole scene last night happened in front of some less-than-discreet paintings, y'know."

"Well then, if you're not really a professor, then I suppose I couldn't fire you even if I wanted to," Dumbledore mused aloud, and Willow wasn't sure whether she wanted to scream and pull her hair out or just start crying for sheer frustration at the amusement in his tone. It's not funny. It's my life, and it's not funny.

She just stood and stared, and something of her impatience must have shown in her face.

"Are you listening to me, Professor Rosenberg?" Dumbledore asked, tone sobering. "You are not a professor. You are not under contract, and as it so happens, your salary has been coming from my personal accounts. There are no official ties between yourself and Hogwarts."

"So . . I can't get you in trouble?" Willow ventured.

"Of course you can," Dumbledore said, cheerfully dismissive. "You can, and likely will, get me into a great deal of trouble, but I am not the school."

"Harry would argue that," Willow retorted, and then grimaced. "And that was so very not the point."

"Nothing of substance has changed," Dumbledore pointed out. "If anything, our circumstances are even more dire now than they were some four months ago." He paused, giving her an assessing look. "Did you know that beheading was legal in Muggle Germany as late as 1938?"

"Huh?" Willow blurted out. "I mean - actually, I did know that, I did a report on the death penalty in ninth grade and they were one of the last European countries to - not the point. Huh?"

"We in the Wizarding world like to think we are more civilized, substituting the Dementor's Kiss for the doling out of physical death," Dumbledore continued on, ignoring her confusion. "That's a lot of nonsense, of course, as we both know, but never the less, an execution is a shocking concept to a boy raised in Wizarding society, and young boys do love shocking things."

"Uh - sure," Willow agreed, feeling utterly lost, with more than a trace of annoyance creeping up at the back of her mind. Would it be too much to ask that he just say whatever he's trying to say?

"I'm attempting to explain, Miss Rosenberg, what myself and a young friend were doing at a Muggle execution in 1874," Dumbledore clarified. "The idea seemed quite thrilling at the time, and we reasoned that the poor man was going to lose his head whether we were there to see it or not - of course, the 'poor man' in question had murdered several young girls, but that was a fact I discovered later, in adulthood, when my conscience grew rather louder and my interest in whether a severed head would blink had waned somewhat."

Willow blinked, realized she was blinking, and couldn't help doing it again. You blink, like, a bazillion times a minute.

And now I'm going to be thinking about it every single time until I can get that oh-so-pleasant mental image out of my head.

They do. Blink. At least if they're demons. Maybe that's different?

I'm blinking again.

Are we nearing a point here?

Blink. Blink, blink, blink - argh!

"It was not thrilling, Miss Rosenberg, as I'm certain you can imagine."

"Yeah," Willow agreed awkwardly. "Seeing people die, it's - really not thrilling."

"But my young friend thought that it really was," Dumbledore concluded, and there was something heavy in his voice. "He wanted to go see another, and I believe he did, more than once - I didn't accompany him again, but I didn't tell my parents, either, or his, or anyone else. Boys have a certain code of honor amongst themselves, about these sorts of things, and I kept it. At the time, it seemed the right thing to do - conveniently enough, considering it saved me the trouble of having to explain my own involvement."

"So - what happened?" Willow asked.

"I killed him," Dumbledore concluded flatly. "Seventy years later, after he'd killed a great many people in the mean time. He was, by that time, going by the name of Grindelwald."

"Oh," Willow said, realized her mouth was hanging open, and closed it.

"I will never know, you see, Miss Rosenberg, how differently the story might have ended, if I'd mentioned to someone all those years ago that something was wrong. That he was just a little too enamored of all the blood."

"But - you were just a kid," Willow argued. "You didn't know -"

"No, I didn't," Dumbledore cut her off. "And I wonder, and I regret, but I don't blame myself. One can be responsible for the things one has done, and for the things one clearly should have done, but not for one's lack of omniscience. It is a hard fact of life, Miss Rosenberg, that at times there is no truly right thing to do, only the best that we're able as we are in that moment. We can't send our later, better selves back."

"It's not the same," Willow argued instantly.

"How?" Dumbledore pressed.

"Because -" she stopped, and didn't know how to finish.

Because it just is. Because yeah, maybe if you'd tattled it would have been different, and I was just saying that to make you feel better, though you apparently don't feel bad, and - and I do.

"Because I'm not a kid," Willow said finally. "Maybe when it started but not - not when it ended, not now."

"Is it ended?" Dumbledore asked, peering at her from over the rims of his spectacles, with a look so piercing Willow couldn't imagine that he actually needed the glasses at all. "Have you put these things to rest in your head, that they are over and done and there is no changing them now?"

She didn't answer. Explaining would take too long .. like maybe forever .. and screaming might be a little loud and uncalled-for.

"I won't ask you to forgive yourself, or Mr. Giles, or anyone else," Dumbledore said solemnly, standing and pressing a scrap of folded parchment into her hand. "That would not be my place. But make your peace, Miss Rosenberg, because we need you here and now."

Willow stared down at the crumpled parchment for long moments after he left before she finally opened it; scrawled inside was an address in London.

The address in London belonged to an upscale townhouse with green shutters and a plethora of window boxes, all of them currently overflowing with melting, faintly grayish slush. The pretty, dark-skinned woman who answered the door looked vaguely annoyed at first, as if she thought Willow might be selling something; then a light seemed to go on somewhere behind her eyes. Recognition was followed rapidly by very obvious distress.

"Hi," Willow said, trying to sound non-threatening. "Um, is Giles here? I mean, Rupert. Rupert Giles. I guess you call him Rupert, though I guess you know his last name too, and I'm really sorry to be bothering you, but – is he here?"

"I'll get him," Olivia said hastily, and disappeared, leaving Willow standing on the doorstep.

The street was quiet, but not empty, and Willow became uneasily aware of people staring. Not like Sunnydale. I guess this is the sort of street where weird things don't happen. I guess leaving someone standing on outside your door is weirdness, so far as the folks who live here are concerned.

I don't even wanna know how Dumbledore got this address. It's not like a hotel, he can't have called every house in London and asked if a Rupert Giles was staying there.

At least, I don't think he could have . . and really I don't even know if Giles is staying here or like, actually living here now. Maybe he is.

Maybe they live together and Giles' name is in the phone book and everything . . maybe they're married . . maybe all kinds of stuff happened while I was gone and it's not that Dumbledore's so all-knowing it's just that I'm so completely clueless, and –

"I'm sorry," Olivia's face reappeared around the door, which was then pulled open. "Come in, please, he'll be right down." No wedding ring. Good. I didn't miss Giles' wedding.

Because Giles didn't have a wedding and you really need to work on keeping in touch with reality now.

"Thanks," Willow said nervously, stepping into a faintly cluttered foyer, very aware of the muddiness of her shoes, her cloak dripping onto the tile. There was luggage stacked by the door, with tags from LA and Sunnydale and Heathrow. I almost missed him. "So, um, how've you been?" Her voice squeaked.

"Oh, very well, thank you," Olivia responded, smiling a trifle too widely, fiddling with a button on the cuff of her shirtsleeve. "And you?"

It was clearly an automatic response; the moment the words left the older woman's lips, her eyes rounded almost comically.

"Good," Willow responded hurriedly. "I mean, okay. I've been okay. Not that bad, I mean, not as bad as you've probably – I mean -"

"Have you changed your mind?" a strident, familiar voice demanded; Olivia jumped, and Willow tensed, looking over the other woman's shoulder and seeing Giles taking the last step off a narrow wooden staircase.

"No," Willow answered resolutely, pulse thumping in her throat. Olivia murmured something unintelligibly fast, that involved the words 'tea' and 'privacy', and vanished back into the house.

"Then why are you here?" Giles asked, stopping just at the point where carpet met tile and sitting room turned into foyer. Like he's staying on his side of the line. Drawing a line or holding a line or . . or damn it, we're outside the lines, here. We're already way outside the lines.

But I guess we're gonna have our little stand-off anyway. So much for being mature.

How old is he? I don't know how old he is, not exactly. He was always just . . old. I mean, not like, geriatric old, but like –

- like don't-touch old, and he can't be that much older than Severus, and he's acting like a child. It's daylight and I've had sleep and I'm not hysterical and he's really, really acting like a kid who missed his naptime.

But . . why am I here?

Because Dumbledore told me to? Oh, that's real grown up.

"Is everyone okay?" Willow blurted out.

Giles said nothing, just glared, and the glare said more clearly than any words could have that he didn't feel she had the right to ask that question. Willow fought the urge to squirm.

"Is everyone alive?" she pressed. "Or, at least, in the same state of life or un-life or whatever that they were before?" I have a right to that much.

"Everyone is more or less as you left them," Giles retorted neatly.

That's not so much of a comforting answer.

But it means nobody died, right?

"It would have been worse if I stayed," Willow said quietly. "It was – I was worse."

"You cannot possibly know that," Giles insisted, cold and artificially calm. "You've no idea what's happened. You can't know whether you would have made it better or worse."

Well I'd know if you'd tell me. This is stupid. This is beyond stupid. This is . . imbecilic.

"I made a decision," Willow said, and expected her voice to squeak. It didn't; she was surprised at how hard, how very not-sorry she sounded. But I am sorry. I'm sorry this all happened like this and if you could stop standing there on your side of the line and being all disappointed and disapproving and stuff, maybe I could tell you that. Maybe you'd even believe me. But I guess we're not gonna do that. "Maybe I didn't go about it like I should have but I just .. I just made a judgment call, that it was how things needed to be."

And that should sound familiar.

"If you're waiting for me to apologize for not having told you about Wizarding society, I'm afraid you're going to have a very long wait," Giles retorted. "And for the record, you are not being subtle."

"I'm not trying to be subtle!" Willow snapped. "I'm trying to have a conversation like two grown-ups and you're not holding up your end of it!"

"I'd like to say that makes us even, but really, I don't think it does," Giles shot back.

"I didn't have an end of it!" Willow exclaimed. "I had algebra and homecoming and for God's sake my mother was still picking out my clothes! What the hell right do you think you had to let me take on any of this? I was -"

" – no younger than Buffy, and most determined," Giles interrupted fiercely. "Do not try to tell me now that anything I could have said or done would have kept you from becoming involved, once you knew what was out there, what was at stake."

"So 'cause I signed on that made me, what, in your chain of command or something?" Willow asked incredulously. "All this magic stuff was on a need-to-know basis? 'Cause besides the bigger issue of that really so not being your call, also I really think I needed to know. We needed to know – needed me to know. Do you know what I could have -"

"You could have left," Giles cut her off, quietly, and Willow stopped.

"Left," Willow repeated, and remembered her feverish imaginings of the night before. I could have gone away to school in Roswell, or Roanoke . . but I would have come back . .

"Yes, left," Giles said, a little louder, a little harsher, and somewhere under the hostility Willow could hear the weariness in his voice. "Been taken away. A witch of your potential power would not have been permitted to practice untrained, unchecked, and on a Hellmouth, no less. I don't suppose you've discovered, in your few months among others of your kind, how closely regulated is the practice of magic on a Hellmouth?"

It took Willow a moment to realize he actually expected an answer. "Uh – no?" she said, feeling disturbingly like she'd forgotten her homework. I will not feel like that, damn it, I'm a grown-up adult type person and I am not wrong, here. I do not have to explain myself.

Well, not about this, anyway.

"Extensive training is required, rigorous testing. Years of training and testing. Years in which you would not have been permitted to return, if the American Wizarding regulatory authorities had been aware of your presence in the first place," Giles explained. "The Watchers' Council is, for obvious reasons, somewhat more lax in their attitudes."

Willow was struck by the sudden, disorientingly clear memory of Tara blurting out 'five' when asked their magical proficiency level.

I'm so sorry, baby. I don't know how this all happened, how it all ended up like this, and I'm sorry.

I would never have even met her, if he'd told me, and I'd gone away to school. Never would have known her. Never would have loved her.

Never would have hurt her.

"So you didn't tell," Willow finished for him. "You just made the decision for me."

"You must have noticed by now that this culture, this society, is hardly a bastion of safety and enlightenment," Giles said. It wasn't an apology, but it sounded perilously close to a justification. He knows he was wrong.

"True," Willow allowed. "Except for the part where that had diddly squat to do with the decision you made, 'cause it didn't, did it?"

"It was a factor," Giles insisted. "Not the largest factor, no, but I took it into account."

"You mean it made you feel better," Willow retorted; it suddenly made sense, and she was just as suddenly exhausted again, and on the verge of tears. He was wrong, damn it, it was my decision and he had no right and . . and I get it.

And I'd like to think I would have chosen to stay, and I thought he trusted me, and respected me, and he treated me like he thought I was sorta something like a grown-up, most of the time, and I thought . . well I just thought he trusted me, and he didn't.

And I don't know if I would have trusted me either.

"What you took into account was Buffy. What having a witch around would mean for a Slayer's life expectancy."

I would have too. I would have done anything for her. I did. I pulled her out of heaven because it was her, because we had to because it was Buffy, and didn't you know that? Didn't you know that I loved her too?

Not like Tara, not like . . that. But I loved her.

"And if you expect an apology for that, I repeat, you're going to have a very long wait," Giles answered, voice going quiet again. "You joined the fight willingly. I did try to shelter you, as much as I was able."

"I was sixteen," Willow said. "Okay, maybe seventeen, by the time you knew I was any good at this stuff, but still - teen." And you used me, and you're not sorry, and I want to hate you and I can't quite do it because I would have done it too.

"And we were facing the end of the world," Giles reminded her. "More than once. What would you have done?"

"That's the point," Willow returned. "You didn't ask me."

"You were sixteen," Giles responded.

It went quiet, and into the sudden absence of things left to say, Olivia came clinking back out of the kitchen with a tea set balanced on a tray. She glanced assessing up at Watcher and witch as she bent to set the tea tray on a low table off to the left, just barely visible from the foyer. Willow thought she still looked unsettled but not so nervous, as if making tea had calmed her – or perhaps reminded her that this was her house.

"I should go," Willow said finally, and felt the words sinking down into her gut like lead. I guess you're not apologizing and I'm not apologizing and nobody's sorry and everybody's feeling all justified and . .

. . and I think it's all too late to go back and make this better. I don't think there's anything else to say, now.

It could have been different but it just wasn't.

I'm sorry you feel like you shouldn't have trusted me even as much as you did. I'm sorry about that, 'cause boy do I get it. I didn't mean to not be who you thought I was.

"Yes, I think you should, if you're going. That is to say, staying," Giles agreed, but there was a hesitation, the faintest hint of residual hope. I'm sorry.

"I'm staying," Willow confirmed. Olivia paused in setting teacups out on saucers, two already arranged, a third held hovering halfway between tray and tabletop.

"I am sorry to hear that," Giles offered; it still wasn't an apology, but it was something.

"Is everyone okay?" Willow asked again.

"No," Giles said bluntly, and Willow's stomach clenched. "But no one's died."

"What -" she began anxiously.

"We'll get along with you," Giles cut her off.

"You know – you know if it's ever the end of the world, where to find me," Willow said, resolve wavering. Please don't hate me.

I think maybe I hate you just a little, and I can't forgive you, but . . but it's still you, you're still Giles, and if you're not who I thought you were and nothing was what I thought it was, it was still . . it was still something. It was still a lot, and I don't want you to hate me.

We did the best we could. We all did the best we could and it just wasn't good enough.

"It isn't the end of the world," Giles told her. He didn't elaborate. Olivia set the third teacup back on the tray, upside down, and fiddled with the chain on the tea strainer.

"That's good," Willow said, biting her lip. I'm going to cry again.

But not in front of him. I will not cry in front of him.

She turned and let herself out the door.

The walk back in from Hogsmeade was long, wet, and painfully cold; Willow wandered the corridors of Hogwarts with her travel cloak still on, dripping on the floor, very pointedly ignoring the occasional sideways glance from a student when classes let out. She didn't want to go back to her rooms, which yesterday had been home, and now felt illogically as if they – the whole school, really, but mostly the places she'd lived the most – had somehow betrayed her, in letting her delude herself so badly.

She was tired, but there was no temptation to stop; walking was soothing. Gradually her clothes dried, and grew too hot to be worn indoors. She let the cloak fall back off her shoulders, carrying it around her elbows. It was really still too hot, hot enough to make her feel vaguely nauseous and overwhelmed, but she didn't want to stop anywhere that she could put it down.

When classroom doors opened for the second time and students again spilled out into the hallways, Willow realized she'd been meandering aimlessly for more than an hour. This is silly. Stop it.

I don't want to go to my rooms and there's no reason to go to my classroom and Severus won't even be in his rooms and I don't want to be in his rooms either anyway and –

She stopped, and realized she was nearly to the door of one of the potions' labs; there were students leaving, which meant a class had just ended. Severus was levitating a gelatinous mass of some obviously-botched potion towards the refuse bin when she entered, an expression of utmost disgust on his face.

"What was that supposed to be?" she asked, wrinkling her nose; there was a strong smell of sulfur in the air. She sat at a desk towards the back.

"A hydrating serum," Severus answered, sounding somewhere between incredulous and pained.

"Second years?" Willow guessed.

"Fourth," he corrected. He muttered 'finite incantatem' with the glob of would-be hydrating serum a few inches above the bin, so that it fell with a rather sickening splat. A vaguely satisfied expression flickered briefly across his features at the sound.

"I thought hydrating serums were a second year thing," Willow said.

"They are," Severus concurred, finally glancing over at her. "But a hydrating serum is the base from which one concocts a headache remedy."

"Like what you gave me?" Willow asked, scowling accusatorily at him. "That knocked me out for half the day?"

"That was a slightly more advanced formulation," he said, smirking briefly back at her, before his expression went serious and wary. "How is your head now?"

"Attached at the neck," Willow said, shrugging. How is my head .. my head would be a mess, at the moment. My head would have been turned upside down and shaken, and possibly dropped a few times.

He gave her an unreadable look, then moved on to setting up for his incoming class, retrieving various jars and pots from the adjacent storeroom.

"What've you got next?" Willow called out, tracing a circular burn mark on the desk in front of her.

"Third years, Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw," he answered, unscrewing the top to a bottle of what looked vaguely like dark purple worms, apparently finding it grudgingly acceptable, and setting it down on his desk.

"Mind if I stay?" Willow asked, not sure where the idea came from, but it was appealing. "Sit in, play along, like I used to when I first got here?"

"You know how to make a potion to prevent sunburn," Severus said.

"You're making sunscreen?" Willow asked, amused. "That's so neat."

"You don't know how to make a potion to prevent sunburn," he surmised, sounding scornfully disbelieving.

"I could figure it out, but . . " she shrugged, letting it trail off. "Do you mind?"

"Of course not."

"I'll need to borrow a cauldron."

He disappeared once more into the storeroom, and came back out with a heavy cauldron of polished bronze, smoother and deeper than what most of the students had.

"This is yours," Willow said, surprised.

"I was aware," Severus drawled.

"Not afraid I'll blow it up?" she teased.

"I have others," he responded dryly; she stuck her tongue out, and at the same time the first students walked in the door, a gaggle of Ravenclaw girls all crushed together and whispering. A girl with long pale hair giggled loudly.

"If you would kindly remember that this is a class and not a social event, Miss Clearwater?" Severus sneered, turning in a billow of robes to glare at his pupils. The girl in question stuttered out something incomprehensible. "Take your seat, Miss Clearwater," he instructed dismissively, and the girl scurried off towards the front of the classroom, her friends scattering to their various places, now all silent but darting furtive glances at one another.

Somebody's gonna lose points for passing notes today, I think. Wonder what happened that's so giggle-worthy.

More students trickled in, and Willow noticed that the original group of giggling girls all seemed to find a reason to be looking at Miss Clearwater about the time a dark-haired Hufflepuff boy entered the room.

"Now, today, we will be brewing a potion used to ward against the harmful effects of over-exposure to sunlight," Snape began, when the classroom was nearly full. "And ten points from Ravenclaw, Mr. Dearden, for your habitual tardiness," he added in a sneer as a tall, gangly boy came running in the door. "Now that you've seen fit to grace us with your presence, perhaps you could tell me one of the key ingredients to the potion we'll be making today."

He really can be such an ass. If I'd had him for a teacher I'd have hated his guts.

"Uh -" stammered the Ravenclaw, who hadn't heard what potion was to be made.

"Perhaps someone else actually read last week's assignment," Snape cut him off, and hands shot up around the classroom. Severus gave Willow a very pointed look, clearly indicating that she should not be the one to answer.

Well, it's not like I know, anyway.

Though I'd think maybe zinc ore, or maybe –

She made a point of very obviously folding her hands in her lap.

- or maybe I'll just listen. Maybe that'd be good enough, for today.

TBC . .