Monday was generally a little harder than the other days of the week, because the children were either exhausted from staying up too late on Sunday, or just couldn't focus. However, this day seemed to be worse than usual.
Until lunchtime, everything had been going well, but walking into the meal one of his sixth-years fainted. Severus had been walking behind a group of boisterous second-year that were starting to roughhouse. He broke them up and sent them in to sit at different ends of the table when out of the corner of his eye he saw Merryn Leeds sway. She was rather delicate, a dedicated transfiguration student who was a favourite of Minerva. He was fond of her too, despite her mediocre potion attempts, because she was one of the few Slytherin sixth-years that had a worthwhile ambition, wanting to become an editor of the human transfiguration journal, Betwixt Forms. But she was prone to fainting when she overworked herself, and Severus, in the lead-up to her OWLs, had been forced to place a monitoring charm on her. He had removed it at the end of the year because he had reasoned that he did not want to be alerted over the summer holidays when there would be nothing he could do to help the girl, and that she shouldn't have any cause to overwork herself again until her NEWT year.
Shoving his way through students, he managed to reach her a few moments after one of the other sixth-years caught her as she fell. After carrying her to the infirmary, his voice was hoarse from telling people to get out of the way, you imbecile, and from reassuring her friends that she would be fine.
Poppy congratulated him on remembering not to levitate her, and after she had revived the girl, the two of them held a small interrogation.
Severus was standing, with his hands deliberately folded, in a way that he knew appeared imposing. Poppy was seated beside the girl on the hospital bed, and both of them were eying Miss Leeds in a way that made the girl shrink back into herself a little.
Severus began, in a way that had been practised many times. "Miss Leeds, might you care to inform me why, on my way to the Great Hall, I saw you faint?"
Poppy, not waiting for the girl to answer the somewhat rhetorical question, said, "We have informed you before what to do when you feel faint, or dizzy, or nauseous. Why did you not sit down and have a message sent to me, your housemaster, or another teacher?"
They tag-teamed Merryn Leeds until she admitted that she had just been trying to get into the Great Hall first, and had felt that she would be run over by other students if she had sat on the floor. Poppy reminded her that if one of the students had tried to levitate her to the hospital wing it would have increased her nausea upon waking, and Severus informed her that her ability with transfiguration would allow her to create a chair from a pencil or some other such thing. They then left her sitting back on the bed with a meeting with Severus written in her diary to discuss her work habits.
In Poppy's office, Severus sank into one of her cushy chairs to sip on a glass of water while Poppy scanned him to make sure that he hadn't injured his back carrying Merryn. Although he was reasonably strong from carrying around metal cauldrons, his arms had been feeling like they were about to fall off by the time he had gotten to the hospital wing.
"All fine, Severus. Just stay here for a while longer and rest."
They sat in companionable silence for five minutes or so, then Severus jumped up with a start.
"Oh, I completely forgot. Lunch. It must be over by now, and if it isn't, it will be soon."
Poppy looked at him concernedly. "You didn't have time to eat anything, did you?"
He did a tempus charm, and was annoyed to see that his class had started two minutes ago. "I didn't even get one foot into the hall. I need to go- I have third year Hufflepuff and Gryffindors. They're an absolute nightmare. Especially after lunch."
"You can have the muffin I was saving for a mid-afternoon snack, and then floo down to your office. Faster than walking, I think." She summoned a box, then handed the muffin in it to him. "Oat, pear, and apple."
"Thanks, Poppy." It was actually quite nice. He gobbled it down, then strode to the fireplace. "Tell Miss Leeds to remember to bring her study timetable when she comes to see me tomorrow. I probably won't see her again today."
Severus knew it sounded strange, but Hufflepuff and Gryffindor was an exhausting combination for potions. Third-years were a mess at the best of times, with some early bloomers towering over the rest, and petty quarrels reigning. In potions class, the more timid Hufflepuffs didn't venture anything without much encouragement of the threatening kind, and the boisterous among the Gryffindors had to be threatened to not act rashly and ruin their potion by trying to get it done as quickly as possible and following minimal instructions. This meant that he had to switch from telling them to go ahead and actually do something, to stop doing that, immediately! Do not put them in whole, the instructions say finely grated! The lessons were never productive, and he always found himself a lot more frustrated at the end of them.
He counted it a success that only two cauldrons exploded, one belonging to a Gryffindor that decided that roughly shredding was the same as finely dicing, and had also added bubotuber pus instead of bundimun secretion. The other was a Hufflepuff. Severus suspected that an ingredient had been thrown into the cauldron from across the classroom, as he had seen a movement out of the corner of his eye. Admittedly, the Hufflepuff whose cauldron it was happened to be particularly annoying, but that didn't excuse the danger of the action.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to tell who had thrown it, so had spent the last five minutes pacing the front of the classroom lecturing on basic cauldron safety, which they covered in first year. Just as they were about to leave, he had assigned the whole class detention with Filch, prompting a series of groans and treasonous mutterings. He had added, lightly, that if the thrower was turned in, only he or she would be punished, and left that to stew in their brains.
The next class was the seventh-years, who were a relatively good lot this year. He felt relatively secure in their abilities, and would have taken a nap at his desk if he didn't think that it would send the wrong message and undermine his fearsome demeanour. Instead he paced around the classroom and didn't say anything for the entire lesson after he had told them what potion they were brewing. Let them think that he was testing their abilities to brew completely unaided.
He decided to have something to eat before heading off to London, so retreated to his office and floo-called the kitchens. While he was waiting for them to send something up, Severus enchanted the sign on the door to change from Office Hours Today: 4:00pm to 6:00pm to Not here, go bother someone else. He knew that if another teacher saw it he would be in trouble, but they usually floo-called his office if they wanted to speak with him. Severus also couldn't for the life of him think of anything else he could but up that would get the message across. His brain had stopped working for lack of food.
Luckily enough, the house-elves sent up an entire meal for him, with a light tomato soup and a plate of a chicken pasta salad. As soon as he had placed his cutlery down precisely, it all vanished. With a silent "Thank you," to the air, he stood up.
Swirling his cloak around his shoulders, Severus debated whether he should apparate once outside the gates, or walk to Hogsmeade and floo from there. Deciding that he would get enough fresh air wandering around wizarding London, and lamenting the fact that Hogwarts didn't allow floo connections to the outside world except under the emergency override, he barely remembered to grab his list.
Fortunately no-one accosted him on his way out, so it was with a faint crack he apparated away, ten minutes later outside the gates to the castle grounds.