Severus absently tapped his quill on the desk, answering a student's question automatically, without returning from his daydream. "Pomegranate juice."

Alarmed cries called him forth to reality, and as his black eyes snapped up and swept over his classroom, he suppressed a groan. You incomprehensible ass! You blithering half-wit! The voice in his head bellowed at him as he appeared at a student's side, helping the distraught girl keep the potion that spilled out of her melting cauldron from exploding. You abysmal idiot!

For the first time in his entire career, Severus Snape assured a student that a brewing accident was not her fault, and returned to his desk. As a young third year (who reminded him powerfully of Hermione Granger in her early days) approached his desk to turn in a paper, she stared at him.

"Sir?"

"Yes?" Severus growled.

"I... You must have known the pomegranate juice would do that."

"Your point?" He hissed, at a complete loss. There's no chance of you snarking your way out of this one, old boy...

"So why... Why did you tell Rachel to use it?"

He snarled at her. "Return to your seat, and thirty points from Gryffindor for your insolence."

As it was, Sabine had only two lessons to teach that day; both were third-year Charms, which was both a relief and a welcome return to her favourite subject. So it came to pass that Sabine sat upon Professor Flitwick's impossibly low desk, her legs crossed femininely before her and providing a surface upon which she could read a book of her choosing.

It was, in fact, a collection of the many different versions of a very specific Greek myth: namely, Persephone and the Pomegranate Seeds. The woman sighed as she read, fairly ignoring the collection of students chanting a simple incantation to make a teacup sing.

"Professor Snape as a cunning king of darkness. How terribly romantic," she snickered to herself. The entire front row went quiet, quickly followed by most of the second and third. At this Trefethen looked up in alarm to come face to face with a thirteen-year-old brunette boy with his teacup bouncing up and down on his head.

"W-who did you say was romantic?" asked Reginald Withers, his eyes wide. Looking past his shoulder, one could see that almost half the class wanted the answer to his same question.

"What— I— n-nobody. You're not making any sense, Withers. Stop disrupting the class. Five points from Ravenclaw," Sabine sputtered, seizing the teacup from his head and tapping it with her wand before giving it back to him.

He hastened back to his seat, and Sabine glowered at the rest of the class. "I would have less of your staring and more of your working. Aren't you students? Then study!" she barked, sending many a head jerking back down to their respective cups.

Almost without thinking, Sabine lowered her head and raised her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. Perhaps Severus' migraines are contagious.