For the fifth time, Hermione caught herself fiddling with her wand, and put it back down on her desk.
She'd finally managed to sneak away to the Room of Requirement after everyone else had gone to bed last night, thinking hard I need to find where Severus Snape is hiding, and the Room's magic had let her into a surprisingly comfortable suite of rooms, complete with armchairs by the fireplace and shelves and shelves of books.
The man himself had been lounging in one of those chairs and reading one of those books. Hermione had nervously set out her plan to introduce new students to the art of potion-brewing. If she'd expected praise, or reassurance, she was disappointed: Snape had raised an eyebrow dangerously high and said only one word.
Ambitious.
Hermione snorted at the memory. The nerve of him, to use the very quality his own House holds so dear to insult me. I suppose Gryffindors aren't allowed to be ambitious?
She settled her teaching robe more securely over her shoulders. Beneath it she wore clothes that would have passed, in the Muggle world, as 'smart casual' — a light jumper with sleeves wide enough for her wand in a slightly shimmery bronze, and wool slacks charmed to the same colour. Dragon-hide boots sturdy enough to resist even the most corrosive spilt potion — even without her protective spells — completed her outfit. Be yourself, only more so, had been Ginny's advice, and Hermione had decided that she was a Muggle-born witch who lived as easily in the Muggle world as the wizarding one, and she wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
"Here I am," Ginny cried, hurrying through the door with a student in tow. Hermione saw that it was little Maisie Wilkins, last sorted the night before. "I haven't explained it to her yet, but she said she's game." She looked down at Maisie. "You are game, aren't you?"
Maisie nodded. "For anything."
"Well, this won't hurt," Hermione said, "at least, it'll be a bit uncomfortable for Ginny and me, but it won't hurt you."
"Except for the hair-pulling," Ginny said.
Maisie's hand went to her head. Hermione thought it was in instinctive protest, but the girl screwed up her face and tugged hard. She held her hand out. "This enough?"
"That's brilliant," Hermione said. "Now, this is what we're going to do …"
Ten minutes later, when the first year students filed in for their very first ever lesson in potions, they found Maisie Wilkins already at her desk, cauldron in front of her and her books neatly stacked. Professor Granger leaned against her desk at the front of the room, and if her stance had an athletic grace a touch unusual for someone who spent most of her life stooped over a cauldron, the students didn't notice. They took their seats, whispering to each other, gazing around the shelves of obscure ingredients with mingled interest and anxiety.
"There's potions in here that can do anything," Colin Aitkins whispered to Maisie. "If we could get into the Library — there's a part that has the most amazing books, it's called the Restricted Section, and —"
Professor Granger cleared her throat. "As was once said to me, there will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class," she said. "As such —"
The door flew open again, and Maisie Wilkins walked in. "I'm sorry I'm late, Professor, I —"
The two Maisies stared at each other.
"Impostor!" the seated Maisie cried.
"You are!" the standing Maisie protested. "You've stolen my face!"
"It's my face, look!" Maisie-at-the-bench pinched her own cheek and tugged it. Beside her, Colin Aitkins edged away.
Maisie-at-the-door stamped her foot. "Stop looking like me this instant!"
"You stop looking like me!"
Colin reached the end of the desk, and the two Ravenclaw students at the next table grabbed his arms and pulled him to a safer distance.
"We seem to have a dilemma," Professor Granger said. She picked up her wand from the desk and pointed it first at the Maisie standing by the door, and then at the Maisie sitting down, saying "Revelio! Revelio!"
Nothing happened.
"Oh, dear," she said, not sounding the least alarmed. "What strange manner of thing is this? What can we do?"
There was a tense silence until finally one of the Ravenclaw students seemed to realise it was an actual question, not a rhetorical remark. He raised his hand, and Professor Granger gave him a nod. "Professor, we could ask her family if she has any birthmarks, and check."
"I do!" Maisie by the door said promptly. She pushed up her sleeve and showed four fat freckles in a perfect square.
"Me too!" seated Maisie responded, pushing up her sleeve to show the exact same freckles.
"No points to Ravenclaw," Professor Granger said. "What else can we do?"
Another hand went up: Colin Aitkins. "We could ask them questions that only Maisie would know."
The professor nodded. "That's what we did during the war. Five points to Hufflepuff. Does anyone know any questions that only Maisie would know the answer to?"
Colin's hand went up again, and at Professor Granger's nod, he said, "What was the first thing you said to me?"
"I hope you don't get train-sick," Maisie by the door said quickly.
"That's right, Professor Granger!" Colin said. "She's the real one!"
As one, the other students rose and backed away from the Maisie who sat at the desk. A few had their wands out.
"Wands away," Professor Granger said quickly.
Colin ignored her. "You tell us who you are right now! Or I'll hex you!"
The seated Maisie got to her feet slowly. "I've never put much stock in Divination," she said, raising her cauldron over her head. "I will, however, predict that you're about to be embarrassed to have said that."
The freshly-brewed batch of Thief's Downfall splashed over Hermione's head. She felt it strip the Polyjuice change from her and quickly dropped her wand from her sleeve to her hand, enlarging her clothes. Let's not start the school year flashing the students, shall we?
The entire class of students stared agape as their Potions Professor emerged from the illusion of their classmate, and then turned to stare at the Professor Granger at the front of the class.
"Pass the cauldron, will you?" the original Professor said, and when the new Professor sent it across the room with a flick of her wand, she tipped the rest of the contents over her head. Her hair reddened, freckles appeared across the bridge of her nose, and she was unmistakably —
"Gosh, that's Weasley," said a stunned voice.
"Miss Wilkins, thank you for your co-operation," Hermione said. "Mr Aitkins, I will refrain from the usual point deduction for threatening to hex a teacher, under the circumstances, but I do advise you to leave the Restricted Section alone unless you are tired of having all of your fingers."
"Need me for anything else?" Ginny asked.
"No, thank you, Madam Weasley," Hermione said.
"My pleasure, Professor Granger," Ginny said. Hermione heard her muttering something about wait 'til I tell George on her way out the door.
With a wave of her wand, Hermione cleared up the splashes of potion on the floor and benches. "Please take your seats again. Thank you. Now. Who can tell me why Madam Weasley's Revelio didn't unmask me?"
Colin's hand shot up. Hermione waited until a few other hands raised tentatively. "Mr Aitkins."
"Because you used a potion," he said promptly.
"Correct. Which potion?" Colin's hand waved immediately and Hermione smiled at him. "I know you know, Mr Aitkins. You've already earned your House points this lesson, and the others should have a chance too."
He looked disappointed, but he nodded and lowered his hand, and Hermione called on another student.
By the time the lesson was over she'd led them through the crucial difference between potions and charms — that potions were just as powerful when used by someone with little or no magic as by someone with a great deal, depending as they did on the ability of the brewer — the most common uses of potions, and some of the more extravagant and spectacular potions they would brew over the years ahead. "Miss Wilkins, Mr Aitkins, could you wait behind a moment?"
The other students filed out, talking excitedly, and the two she'd named approached her desk. Respectfully, but not fearfully, Hermione was pleased to note. "Miss Wilkins, thank you again for your assistance. You are certainly a better actor than Madam Weasley. You didn't answer any of my questions, though."
"I knew a lot of the answers," Maisie said. "But it didn't seem fair, since I did have more time to think about it than anyone else."
Hermione nodded. "Five points to Hufflepuff for exemplary fair play, then. Mr Aitkins. I really wasn't kidding about the Restricted Section. I spent a long time in the Hospital Wing after messing about with something I found in there, when I was a student. If your curiosity becomes overwhelming, I want you to promise that you come to me. I can judge, far better than you can, what's safe for you to read, and safe for you to know."
His forehead wrinkled. "Safe for me to know? How can it be unsafe to know something?"
"Do you know the saying, 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'?" Hermione asked.
He shook his head, but Maisie nodded. "It's a Muggle saying. My aunt and uncle are Muggles."
Hermione smiled at her. "It is. It comes from Alexander Pope. 'A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again'."
Colin was still frowning. "So learning a lot is good."
"Yes, but learning builds step on step," Hermione said. "And if you skip the early steps and jump right to the end, it's like trying to build a wall from the top first. So — promise me, that you'll ask, rather than try and find your way into the Restricted Section of the Library. There are potions, for example, which are deadly poisons if you get just one step wrong, and if you don't know that, or know how to tell you've got it wrong, you could kill yourself, or a friend, when you were just trying to make sure they won a Quidditch match." Over the two first years' heads, Hermione could see her senior class at the door. She held up one finger to tell them to wait. "Promise me, Colin."
He nodded. "I promise."
"Good. On to your next class, then."
Her next class came in as the two young Hufflepuffs left, and they were the students she most dreaded facing. Seventh year — the same age that she and Harry and Ron had been when they'd set out on their desperate quest to find and destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes. Many of them had been first year students under Headmaster Snape, and second year students when she herself had returned to Hogwarts to do her N.E. .
And this was a Slytherin and Gryffindor class.
"Good morning," she said, and was pleased that her voice came out steady and even. "This year is the most —"
One of the Slytherin students raised his hand.
Circe's circlet, if I'd know at the time how annoying that is … "Yes? Mr …" She glanced down at the list on her desk. "Selwyn."
Marcus Selwyn rose to his feet, wand drawn, and Hermione's hand clenched on her own wand. Oh, Merlin, is this never over?
He pointed it to the ceiling instead at her. "Lumos."
Another student was standing, wand raised. "Lumos."
Two Gryffindors, side by side. "Lumos."
And then the whole class was on their feet, silent, glowing wand-tips raised.
Hermione swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. "Thank you," she said. "Now please put your wands down before I start thinking I'm at a Ministry ceremony, and open your books to page three. You have a great deal to learn before your N.E. , and I have every intention of making sure you maintain the high pass rate in Potions that is a Hogwarts tradition."
That class, and the ones that followed it, displayed a grasp of the subject that spoke well of Horace Slughorn's teaching. It strengthened Hermione's conviction that Minerva McGonagall had an ulterior motive in manoeuvring to have Hermione take his position. As she tidied up the classroom, Hermione was satisfied her classes had gone as well as could be expected, but she knew she was nowhere near the teacher Slughorn was. Nor Professor Snape.
Not that I want to be Professor Snape. But she would have liked to have his ability to spot a mis-brewed potion from across the room or seem to see, even with his back turned, a student missing a step in the process.
She sighed, and sank down on one of the student's stools, rubbing the back of her aching neck. As nervous as she'd been before the day started, she'd had no idea just how bloody exhausting teaching would be. Not to mention trying to watch a dozen bubbling cauldrons all at once …
I need to find where Severus Snape is hiding, she told herself firmly, striding back and forth before Barnaby the Barmy. I need to find where Severus Snape is hiding …
But when the Room let her in, the comfortable sitting room was empty.
.
.
Author's note: I'm taking book canon on Polyjuice, in which it changes voice as well as appearance, instead of film canon.