Maggie Collymore stared into her plate of eggs and sausage. She was having difficulty remembering what had made her take this damn job. Every now and then this morning, she looked up into the sea of students seated at breakfast, chattering cheerfully, opening their first letters or packages, comparing new summer freckles or discussing the upcoming quidditch season. She would choose one face and study in carefully, trying to guess if this student would be in her class. This one? Or this one? Would this laughing boy or that studious-looking girl be taking part in her first major experiment? Would they like her? Would she be able to do what she had come here to do?
"Nervous, Professor?"
She turned to look at Filius Flitwick, who was perched on a pile of cushions next to her.
"I've never been a teacher before," she said frankly. "At this moment, I think legislative sessions make me less nervous than teenagers."
"Don't let them know it!" he squeaked, laying a finger against his nose. "The best advice I can give you is to make sure they know straight away that you're a competent, qualified wizard! Or witch, in this case," he inclined his head.
"You mean I should intimidate them?" Maggie laughed a little.
Flitwick spread his hands as though to say she might take it as she liked. "All I know, dear," he said, "is that I've been at this job for many years, but when I started, people wondered if I was up to snuff. you can probably guess why." He raised his eyebrows conspiratorially and gestured rather unnecessarily at his small body. "But I knew what I needed to do. I'd been doing it all my life. I came in on my first day and charmed a small hurricane right there in the corridor outside my classroom. Never had much particular trouble with keeping things orderly after that."
"And you think it's like that for me?
He took a bite of toast and chewed it thoughtfully before answering. "It's unfortunate, but what matters most to many wizards is power, magical power. Hogwarts is a school of magic, after all, and I've observed in the past that those teaching muggle studies are, well, there is a difficulty there. My advice to you is: make sure they know you're a witch!'
"Yes, I see," said Maggie at length, and he mistook her hesitation for still heightened nerves.
"Never fear, dear." He smiled and patted her arm. "It'll be an easy adjustment. And you won't have very many students to worry about after all!"
She grimaced slightly. This was not the comfort he seemed to think it was.
"I hope to change that as quickly as possible. If I had my way, muggle studies would be a required course of study. Which" she continued at once as though heading off a disagreement, "is of course not to suggest that muggle studies is more important than say, Charms or Herbology in a wizard's practical life, but I really believe that the best way to stop this anti-muggle rhetoric that we still see everywhere is to-"
"Forgive me for interrupting you, my dear Professor." He eyed her rather keenly. "But I read your address to the Assemblee Magique, and I quite agree with you; you need not try to convert me. The final vote was a disappointment, I'm sure."
Maggie felt herself nod. He had no idea the level of that disappointment.
"You nearly had them. In fact I wonder that you didn't choose to stay in France. They'll make you fight for it all over again here in Britain. You'll be starting from the beginning."
"I needed to come home." Maggie replied shortly. "France had lost some of its charms for me."
Professor Flitwick nodded and turned a very kind expression up at her. "Well, we are happy you've come here. The post has been empty too long. Won't you eat some breakfast, Professor Collymore, and excuse me? I've got to go see to the timetables."
He hopped down from his pile of cushions with practiced ease and descended the platform to assign class schedules to the Ravenclaws. Then rising from her other side, Pomona went down to do the Hufflepuffs, John to the Gryffindors, and, rising last of all and stalking down the platform, Professor Snape left for the Slytherin table. Sitting quite alone now, Maggie watched him go curiously. They hadn't spoken since their argument, and though the first day nerves had turned her mind away from it, she still hummed with embarrassment when she thought of what he had said to her. Just your usual way of attracting male attention. The memory made her prickle unpleasantly now. If she hadn't heard him confirm that he had been there with her that day in muggle London, she might have believed she had made some mistake, or dreamed it all up.
He was right that she knew who he was by name and reputation. Everyone knew who he was. The mysterious triple agent, the man Harry Potter himself had gone to great lengths to personally exonerate before the Wizangamot. She had followed the post-war news like everyone else. She had read with curious interest the accounts of Snape's cruelty as Hogwarts headmaster and the breathless, lurid reporting on his tragic motivations, his secret heart. The mental picture she had formed of Severus Snape, the erstwhile spy, was pretty well in line with the man she now observed. But it was also all so strangely foreign. Even the way he glided down the Slytherin table, his black robes rippling behind him was so opposite to the understated, even nervous way he had behaved with her before.
She mentally shook herself; it would all be forgotten. He had made that more than clear, and she had bigger things on her mind. But the way his countenance had turned as he looked at her in the dungeon the other day. Cold then hot then deadly cold. It was hard to forget something like that.
"How are you, Professor?"
The headmistress had slipped into Pomona's vacated seat and interrupted Maggie's thoughts.
"Still not used to the honorific, I'm afraid," Maggie looked back quickly and smiled, afraid she had been caught staring. "But I'm all right. Looking forward to getting started."
"I want you to know," said the headmistress seriously, "that I want muggle studies to succeed as much as you do. I know it isn't the most glamorous subject. People tend to think it's…" she paused, delicately looking for the words.
"A waste of time." Maggie finished for her with a tight smile. "I know. If I were sensitive about it, I wouldn't have made a career out of muggle relations."
"Enrollment is higher this term than I expected. Fifteen students, it isn't bad."
"Fifteen students in the entire school. I'll feel quite useless when all the rest of you are managing whole departments with seven course preps to do by yourselves."
"Enrollment will go up. Don't let your guilty feelings grow too great, my dear, or I'll find you something else to do around here."
"Does Mr. Filch need an assistant?" Maggie asked ruefully. "If there is anything I can do, maybe short of taking orders from that dreadful cat of his, do let me know."
Minerva laughed. "From a veteran teacher, Professor Collymore, never volunteer. It's been almost fifty years, and this is the best piece of wisdom I can offer you."
"You all have so many years of experience. It's a little intimidating coming back to work with some of your own teachers. It seems as though no one has a short stint as a Hogwarts professor."
"Hmph," Minerva pursed her lips. "Well, not anymore, I should hope! But you know, we're not all ancient articles. John's only been here a handful of years, though of course" the thin line of her mouth seemed to twitch, "he's had quite a career. But that's all past us now and he gives excellent practical instruction! Septima is closer to your age and quite energetic. I hope the two of you will be friends. And then of course, Severus...now that I think about it, he might be the youngest, save you."
"I know we must have been at Hogwarts together," Maggie said with careful uncaring. "But he was four, maybe five years ahead of me, and I don't remember him." She let her eyes rest on him again, an inky figure still moving slowly down the row of students at the Slytherin house table. "I remember Lily Evans-distantly-she was so beautiful and far above me, I didn't know her, but I heard-well, everyone heard. Was it true?"
Minerva followed her gaze. "As to that, I really have no more idea than anyone else. I remember them both as students of course, and they were close friends; we all thought it was so curious! To my knowledge, Severus has never spoken about it. But I imagine...I imagine it must have been true." She laughed humorlessly. "This is the real difficulty of working with one's former professors. We have long memories! And Severus would be the best person to tell you about that, I'm sure."
"He seems an...unusual man. Changeable."
"Been rude to you already, has he? Don't mind it. It's only his way."
Maggie returned the headmistress's laughing look and set herself more vigorously to her now cold breakfast.
"C-O-L-L-Y-M-O-R-E"
Maggie pronounced each letter as she inscribed it on the blackboard. She'd seen it done in muggle movies.
"Professor Collymore." She turned to smile at her fifteen students and noticed at once that there were only twelve.
"Why don't we start with attendance so that I can learn all of your names?"
This proposal was met quite neutrally. She slipped a sadly short piece of parchment from a small pile on her desk.
"Jean Applewhite?"
"Here," said a pale-eyed girl in the back row. They had all, Maggie noticed, done their best to sit in the back row.
"Michael Dalton"
A curly haired boy whose hands were deep inside the sleeves of his Ravenclaw robes shrugged lazily in acknowledgement and then tipped his chair back on its rear legs.
Margot Dee?
There was silence.
"No Margot?" Maggie heard herself and even she thought she sounded stupid. She moved on at once. "Henry Hushabye?"
"Here."
Later Maggie would reflect that the best that could be said for the experience of taking attendance on her first day was that it was brief. Her students looked dull-eyed and unimpressed. In addition to the absent Miss Dee, a certain Rowan MacDonald and Catherine Skinner were also absent, and no one seemed to know where they might be. She thought briefly back to her own time as a student and imagined herself skipping Herbology or Transfiguration on the first day. It just wasn't done.
"Well, why don't we just jump right in?" Maggie tried to inject an invigorating tone. A tall, heavily built boy called Oswald Krull raised his hand at once. His robes denoted him a Hufflepuff.
"Yes, Mr. Krull?" Maggie smiled.
"Miss, why are Jean and I in a class with little kids?"
"Ah, yes, thank you for asking that. Because there are so few of you and because none of you have taken any coursework in muggle studies before, the headmistress and I decided that all grades, third to seventh, should be in a class together. I won't, of course, expect our younger members of class to perform at the level that you and Miss Applewhite-"
"So we're doing work, Miss?" A fifth year boy laughingly asked.
"Professor Collymore, please. And yes of course. What else would we do?"
They looked at each other rather shiftily but didn't answer her question. The curly-haired boy named Michael Dalton let the front legs of his chair slam loudly down and then put his head in his arms as though he were going to sleep.
"I need this credit to graduate, Miss." Oswald Krull spoke up again. "But I ain't what you'd call academically inclined. Leastways that's what Sprout says, so she put me in 'ere cause it ain't supposed to be work."
Maggie, for a moment, didn't know how to respond to such a direct statement, but she gathered herself as quickly as possible.
"Well, with respect to Professor Sprout, I think you'll find she was incorrect, Mr. Crull. I do plan for you to work and learn in this class, but if y0u come with the intention to put in a reasonable effort, there's no reason you shouldn't-"
"Maybe no one told you," said the pale-eyed Jean Applewhite, "but we aren't exactly the pride of Hogwarts. They put us here because we can't do much else."
"I'm sorry to hear you think so." Maggie tried to sound brisk. Then she strode forward and tapped sharply on the desk of the curly haired boy. "Head up and eyes forward please, Mr. Dalton."
The boy merely buried his head deeper into his arms.
"Better let him sleep, Miss," grinned the girl sitting next to him. "He's not here for being dumb. He's here to…" she looked thoughtful for a moment and then turned to Jean "what's the word, Jeanie?"
"Rehabilitate," said Jean. He's here on Ministry orders, Miss. On account of he roughed up a muggle boy outside a chip shop over the summer."
The first girl nodded vigorously and looked with fear and excitement to see if Michael Dalton would react. He did not. "He don't like muggles, Miss."
A flighty, nervous little current of energy moved around the room. Maggie thought suddenly of bright yellow graffiti in an alleyway off Charing Cross Road. It was why she was here.
"Now, look here, all of-"
"Do you know what happened to the last Muggle Studies professor, Miss?" asked a younger girl in the corner. She looked impressed with herself for interrupting, and Maggie saw her eyes dart toward the older students. "Only, no one will tell us. But we all know. We all heard she-"
"If I may interrupt, Professor," came a smooth and cold voice from the doorway. Maggie turned and saw Professor Snape framed there, holding two children by the elbows. A third was standing nearby, looking surly but trapped. "I believe these little truants belong to you."
Maggie thought he looked very pale, and his eyes glittered maliciously. In contrast, she felt herself heat from her neck to her forehead and knew she must be turning red.
"If they are Margot Dee, Rowan MacDonald, and Catherine Skinner then...yes, they are mine for the hour, Professor. Thank you for helping them find their way."
He inclined his head and released the students, who trudged into the classroom and took seats, as their classmates had done, as far away from Maggie as was possible. A hush seemed to have come over the classroom. Many of the students were eyeing Snape nervously. He surveyed them down the length of his nose. "Sit up boy!" he barked suddenly. Michael Dalton raised his head, eyed Snape for a moment, hovering over his arms, and then sat up straight.
Snape's eyes, set inside the neutral mask of his face, lingered there for a moment and then turned on Maggie. "Good day, Professor Collymore. Enjoy your class." Then he turned in a flurry of black and was gone.
When she turned back to her students, and saw that Michael Dalton's head was once again lying on his desk and all other eyes were fixed on her, she thought wildly about giving up.
"Well." She said at length with that same false brightness she had tried before. "Now that we're all here, why don't we go around the room and introduce ourselves."
She waited until she was in bed that night to cry.