I hope everyone has a merry Christmas tomorrow!
Disclaimer: For all the claims that Snape was really a hero in the series, did he try to have two men executed by the most vile means possible despite there being doubts about their guilt, all for the sake of a 17-year-old grudge? If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.
Chapter 8
A New Regime
The door to the compartment the group shared slid open, and Tracey glanced up to see who it was intruding in their space. "Wondered when you'd finally get here," she said when Jen walked in and dropped her satchel to the floor. "We were starting to worry that we'd need to send out search parties for you. That or you missed the train."
"Nearly did," the black-haired heiress muttered before falling into an available seat. It was weird to have only seven of them around instead of eight, but it was something they all had to get used to now that Kenneth had graduated and moved on to work in his uncle's enchanting shop. "Some Wizengamot stuff came up, and Sirius insisted we wait until he had finished it so we could all go to the platform as a group. He didn't expect it to take as long as it did, though, and I barely had enough time to shrink my trunk, toss it in my bag, and Floo over before the Express pulled out. Then there was the prefects' meeting, so I couldn't come here to say hello until just now." Pulling Luna closer, Jen promptly dropped her head onto the top of the bench cushions and closed her eyes.
"Tired?" Morag asked.
"I've had a busy few weeks."
"Yeah, we know," Susan said with a teasing smile. "It was splashed all over the society pages in the Prophet."
With a scoffing harrumph, Jen denied, "There were only two articles, and one of them was talking about us as a group, not just me. That is anything but 'splashed'."
The blonde next to her flicked her eyes back and forth between the two girls. "What are you talking about?"
Jen's momentary wince told Tracey that the other heiress probably did not want this tossed around so freely, and for reasons that were obvious in hindsight, but the redhead did not catch the fleeting expression. "It's courting season," explained Susan, "when all the heirs and heiresses start going on dates to see who they're… compatible…"
It was the uncharacteristic glare coming from the youngest member of their circle that cut Susan off, and that stare was quickly transferred to Jen. "Dates? What is she talking about?"
"It's part of the courting process. If I want to figure out what family will be joining with mine, I need to meet the people whose Houses have been sending me betrothal offers for the last month. Quit glaring," she suddenly ordered, and even though she still had her eyes closed, Tracey knew she had not had to rely on whatever trick she had used to get around while she was blind. Luna's glare could have been felt across a room. "I'm not going to go out with any of the suitors during the week, and only a few weekends, so I needed to get all of it out of the way sooner rather than later. That means I needed to pack twenty dates into thirty days, and trust me, that was not fun."
"Do you have some picked out yet?" the Scottish witch asked politely.
Jen snarled. "No, I don't. All of the ones I dealt with last month were absolutely awful."
Susan and Tracey made the mistake of glancing at each other, and then they had to hastily look away before they started laughing at the relief on their faces. Both of them were the acting Heads of their Houses, Susan because her aunt had stepped down in order to take over as Minister of Magic without them losing their voice in the Wizengamot and Tracey because Jen had murdered her grandfather, and as a result of those circumstances, they did not have to worry about the drama of finding a future husband until after they graduated. And, of course, they did not have significant others who were upset that they were going out with other people.
"Yes, yes, laugh it up, you two," Jen muttered grumpily. "I was going to warn you about a few wizards to stay away from, but now I won't. You can find out how bad they are on your own."
"Oh, come on, Jen. You wouldn't do that to us, would you?" Tracey asked in a pleading voice, though the smile on her face painted a different picture entirely.
Her fellow heiress raised her head and cracked one eye open to fix both Tracey and Susan with a purple glare. A moment passed while Jen seemed to weigh their sincerity, but finally she dropped her head back down. "Fine. I'll give you advice about one of them. If you get an offer for marrying Cassius McElroy, don't give it any serious consideration. Don't even lead him along to get some incentives out of him. Just turn the McElroys down and move on."
"Was he really that bad?" she could not help but ask. The McElroys were not necessarily a rich House, nor were they highly ranked, but that particular Noble House was one of the largest Neutral families in Britain and one of the best connected. It was rumored that they had family connections to every department in the Ministry and several of the bigger businesses in Diagon. For Jen to tell them to completely blow House McElroy off rather than entertaining Cassius for even one date was a surprise.
"Let me put it this way. Our time together involved a tour of his grandfather's estate and the surrounding land, including a long walk along the lake on their property, and he spent the entire time talking about how grateful I should be that he and I would soon be married and how I should appreciate being part of a House whose history is a tiny fraction of my own." She scoffed. "We can trace our line back to the ninth century for certain, and there is evidence that the Black family is a couple hundred years older than even that. Anyway, the whole time I spent on that lakeside, I wanted nothing more than to transfigure him into a loaf of bread and feed him to his blasted ducks.
"But enough about that." And wasn't it telling that Jen wanted to stop talking about this subject when Luna had relaxed slightly for the first time since it had been brought up? Tracey hid her smile; apparently even witches didn't like the idea of having their girlfriends angry at them. "What about the rest of you? How was your summer in India, Padma?"
"It could have been better," the Hindi girl said sadly. "We… Parv…" Taking a deep breath, she forced out, "The werewolves that attacked Hogsmeade last year were, in fact, able to pass their curse along. Even if Parvati wanted to come back, she couldn't. Werewolves aren't allowed to cross the national borders of ICW-affiliated countries." A few tears rolled down Padma's cheeks, and her voice was tight. "It's ironic, really. Before fourth year, Parvati liked being in this country much more than I did; she liked how permissive Britain was when it came to fashion and behavior, and she's the one who had a bunch of friends. Now she can never leave Asia again."
Padma let Susan pull her into a tight embrace, Morag leaving her spot by the window to squeeze in on the girl's other side. Tracey just shuffled away uncomfortably and grimaced at the commiserating look Jen shot her. She and Padma were not close friends, connected as they were by little beyond surviving Hagrid's idea of a Care of Magical Creatures class and their mutual friendship with Jen, and so she could not say for sure that whatever sympathies she offered would be accepted as more than the empty platitudes of strangers or distant acquaintances, no matter how sincere they were.
What could she say that would offer any comfort, anyway? That Asia was a big place, so Padma's sister would have plenty of places she could go if she decided she had enough of India? That she actually could leave the Conglomerate, but only if her destination was the lawless reaches of South America or Africa where there was no international or sometimes even national governance and where the regions were controlled by local plantation owners, corrupt officials, or outright warlords? That if she were really as popular as she always seemed to be at Hogwarts, she should have no trouble finding new friends wherever she found herself?
Tracey had always been told she had a sharp tongue and a tendency to drive people away with her abrasiveness. Between that and not having experience with friends prior to her fourth year at Hogwarts, extending comfort was a skill she did not have much experience with.
The expression on Jen's face looked plastic and stiff, something forced and not felt, but still she asked, "Has Parvati spoken with other Indian werewolves? I would expect them to form some kind of support structure, at least if they have organized themselves in a similar way to how the European packs have."
"That's probably the only good thing to come out of this mess," Padma agreed. "As soon as we knew she had been cursed, my grandmother sent a letter to the group we were told about when we had to inform the government about her getting bitten. She did say she has enjoyed spending time with all of them."
"Is that why you said she didn't want to come back?" asked Morag in a gentle voice.
"Partly." A grimace swept across Padma's face. "She didn't exactly want to come back after watching her best friend be mauled in front of her. It's one of the many issues she has deal with now that she's a wolf, too."
Susan shook her head in sorrow. "And Lavender Brown wasn't the only in our year to die in that fight, either, you know? Oliver Rivers, one of our housemates, lived through the attack itself, but my aunt said he passed away the day after. Lewis Elric in the year above ours, too, and Keisha Merritt was just a third-year."
"Every house lost people, and for every year it was two or three," Justin murmured.
Tracey wisely kept her mouth shut while the rest of the compartment nodded. Of all four houses, Slytherin had lost the fewest people, and those who had died were innocent of any wrongdoing just like the rest of the fallen. The children of Death Eaters and Death Eater sympathizers, on the other hand, had all been suspiciously absent from the village when the attack began. Why, it was almost as if they had been given early warning to stay away!
And, of course, the new second- and third-years had likewise come through unscathed, but that had nothing to do with their parents' political affiliations and everything to do with them hiding in the Shrieking Shack while Jen slaughtered her way over to them.
"Enough with the maudlin topics!" demanded Morag. "Someone had to have a good summer. Luna, you've been quiet so far. What did you do?"
"Well, Daddy did get a tip about a three-toed bandersnatch that was sighted in Derbyshire," the blonde eventually said. Bolstered by the encouraging nods of the group, she continued, "We decided to make a day-trip of it, so we…"
It was a rather subdued student body that settled in the Great Hall that evening. Not that such a somber mood was any surprise; the unusually large gaps in their ranks were much better at demonstrating the scale of Hogwarts's loss than straight numbers, and that was without the repeated discussions Jen had overheard concerning the thestrals everyone could now see pulling the school carriages. Nor was it a shock when a quick sweep over the Ravenclaw table revealed that the younger years had gravitated toward her and that the Slytherins in that age range had done the same around Tracey. When the children she had taken under her wing had been in danger during the battle, she had proven beyond all doubt that she would protect them, and now they presumably looked to her and, by extension, her friends for protection.
The Sorting of the newest students, on the other hand, was surprisingly unremarkable. The Hat sang a little ditty about how all the houses needed to work together – advice that, while true from a philosophical perspective, would do little to counter the ambitions of a megalomaniacal black wizard like Voldemort – and then it was just a matter of applauding when child after star-struck child was sent to the house of the wise and curious.
When Dumbledore was the headmaster, he had always waited until after dinner to make any important announcements. Marchbanks took a different approach. "Students," she said, her voice suppressing the varied conversations going on at the same time, "welcome to Hogwarts. For those of you who are returning, I am sure that your summer was less than ideal. Too many friends gone, too many people who passed through the Veil far before their time. To say merely that they will be missed does them all a grave disservice."
The staff were staring at her in shock and horror, and the students were also watching, expressions of astonishment plastered over their faces at the blunt honesty she was sharing with them. For her part, Jen felt her interest be piqued; Dumbledore was a master of talking around the point, one of his many irritating qualities, so this change was surprising and would almost certainly be welcome.
"After terrible events like what we experienced last year, it is not weakness to admit that you need help, nor is it strength to reject the comfort others are willing to provide," Marchbanks continued. "If you feel that you need someone to talk to, all the heads of house will make themselves available, or you may instead go to another professor or even come to me. Please do not make the mistake of struggling through your grief on your own.
"In happier news, I have a few announcements to make. There have been some changes to our staff over the summer. Madam Grubbly-Plank, whom I am sure several of you recognize, has agreed to join us as the full-time professor for Care of Magical Creatures." A witch with short grey hair stood for a moment and gave the Great Hall a wave; more than a few students clapped in delight at the news, Padma and Tracey among them. They had both commented more than once that they felt Grubbly-Plank had a far better understanding of how to deal with creatures than Hagrid ever had since she was a normal human like them rather than a half-giant with all the resilience that entailed. "Madam Umbridge was recalled to the Ministry and will not be able to grace us again with her knowledge, but she has been replaced by the august personage of Bathilda Bagshot. Professor Bagshot is the greatest expert on the history of magical Britain alive, and several would argue that even Professor Binns could not compete with her on sheer breadth of knowledge."
Bagshot was a positively ancient witch, withered and stooped, and she stood for just a moment before dropping back into her chair. She had been shaking after that short exertion, Jen noted. That was to be expected from someone who, if she remembered correctly, either was nearing the two-century mark or had already reached it, but she had to wonder at the wisdom of hiring on a professor at that extreme of age. Being magical extended people's lifespans, but it did not make them immortal.
"Teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts this year is Auror Andrew Williamson." This time it was the unknown wizard who rose, and he stood at parade rest and simply looked over the assembled students for a couple of moments. "Auror Williamson was scheduled to take this year off as a sabbatical, and he generously offered to spend that time here and share his expertise with you." Marchbanks did not say 'And you had better appreciate it', but that part of the message was still perfectly clear.
"It is also my regret to tell you that Mr. Filch has moved on to follow other pursuits. We wish him all the best." She had to shout that last part, yet her voice was still drowned out by the loud cheer that erupted from nearly every students' throat. No one had liked Filch, and to hear that he was gone? Interestingly, she did not seem shocked by the reaction, merely resigned. Nearly a minute passed before she could regain control over the masses. "And finally, the mayor of Hogsmeade recently told me that they have begun rebuilding the village, and so it will be available to visit once more sometime later this year.
"Those are all the announcements I wanted to make tonight. Enjoy your dinners, and good luck with your classes tomorrow!"
Sixth-year students from all four houses trudged into the DADA classroom on Monday afternoon. "Welcome to Defense Against the Dark Arts," Williamson told them while they seated themselves at the desks. The Auror had bright red hair that was clipped close to his skull – though the military precision was undercut somewhat by the five o'clock shadow on his cheeks despite it being only shortly after noon – and flat blue eyes. Flicking her eyes over toward one of the Gryffindors taking the class, Jen nodded. There was indeed a bit of resemblance between Williamson and Weasley.
He started pacing across the front of the room as he spoke. "Let's get the obvious out of the way first. Yes, today is my first time teaching. The most I've ever done before this was a couple of skill demonstrations for Auror trainees. As a result, this class will probably be a little different from the ones you had before now. Your headmistress provided me with a syllabus for the different years, and for the younger students, I will be using that. For you and the seventh-years, however, I'm going to be doing something a little different and, honestly, more interesting. You've already proven that you have a good handle on the basics or you wouldn't be here in the first place, so we can jump right into the practical aspects. You have a question?" he asked when he saw Brocklehurst's raised hand.
"Yes, sir. Professor Flitwick was telling us earlier today that this year we will be expected to cast magic nonverbally." A moue of disgust crossed her face, which Jen knew was the result of her failure to accomplish the feat in question. "Are you going to require the same?"
"I would certainly recommend you learn to cast the spells I will teach you nonverbally," he answered after a moment's thought, "if for no other reason than that it makes them far more useful in a real-world scenario. The same goes for nonverbal casting in general; I can't tell you how many times I have gotten the advantage in a fight because the criminal I was facing told me what curse he was using ahead of time. But to answer your question, no, I will not require it." Brocklehurst smiled and nodded in understanding, and her smile only widened when he continued, "And a bit of advice for you on that subject: I have always found it easier to learn spells verbally and only then move on to casting them without speaking. If your professors give you a new spell they want you to use silently from the start, go ahead and give it a try while they're watching, but afterward it will probably work better to split it up into two steps. You might also want to practice by mouthing the words before moving on to keeping your mouths closed. It might not help much, but it will feel more familiar if nothing else."
Every student who had moved on to NEWT-level Charms beamed. That had been the hurdle Flitwick had told them they would all have to overcome, and exceptionally few had managed to do so by the time the bells rang for them to move on to their second-period class. Jen had been one of those particular individuals, mostly because her own unique circumstances meant she had never needed to learn any incantations in order to impose her will upon the world, and she and Flitwick had shared a conspiratorial glance when he walked over to check on her 'progress'.
Sadly, her good mood had not survived Runes. Babbling had told them that they would, in fact, learn how to use the Sumerian runes they were covering this year, but that part of the class would not start until November at the earliest. Sumerian cuneiform was no less complex than the Egyptian hieroglyphs they had learned the previous year, but working magic with them was even more complicated. Whereas Futhark, Ogham, and Egyptian runes could all be used independently, the writings of ancient Sumer only created their effects when fitted together; individual cuneiform just had too many potential and unrelated meanings for them to be used on their own. That, however, meant she needed to learn a large selection of characters before she could figure out how they should be arranged to do whatever bit of magic she wanted to perform.
Williamson clapped his hands. "Now, let's talk about what we will actually be doing. My specialty, and what I will be teaching you, is magical traps and defensive curses. Detecting them, setting them, and most importantly, disarming them. There will be some reading you'll have to do for this class, of course, but I won't assign essays or the like. I'm already going to have enough of that with the younger years," he added in an unhappy aside that widened a number of grins. "Your marks will instead be based on your preparation and in-class participation. I've already spoken with Headmistress Marchbanks, and she has assured me that the library contains several copies of the books I'll want you to read. Before we get to the good stuff, though, I think you could all use an introduction to basic curse-breaking and trap-work."
The rest of the class passed far too quickly for Jen's tastes. This was an interesting subject, far more than James Potter's military history lessons, and since it was about practical skills, it was something she could really use rather than just recite for an exam. Admittedly, her sonar would work better than a detection spell for actually finding traps in most situations because she did not have to actually cast it, but the information received from the detection spell would be easier to interpret than the interaction between the curse and the object.
Tracey waited until they had left the room before she said, "Did anyone else think he was glaring at us?"
"What are you talking about?" Morag asked, fixing the girl with a curious expression. "He wasn't glaring at anyone."
"I could swear he was glaring at me."
"Maybe you just have a guilty conscience," Jen quipped. Now it was Tracey who glared. "I don't know what to tell you. I didn't notice it, but that's not to say he wasn't. Maybe his family and yours has some history?"
"What kind of history are we talking about?" asked Susan. She had been talking to several of their housemates, but now they walked over to join the rest of the group. If only Justin and Padma were taking the class, Jen's collection of friends would be complete. "Who has history with whom?"
"Tracey thinks Williamson was glaring at her, but none of the rest of us saw anything like that," Luna explained.
A wince flashed across Susan's face. "Ah. I can't say if he was or wasn't, but I will say it isn't impossible. He was one of Auntie's bodyguards when he was still a fresh Auror, and I think I remember him speaking badly about Slytherins a couple of times."
"Wonderful," Tracey groused.
Jen opened her mouth to shoot off another barb, but it clacked shut when she felt the three individuals who had broken off from the rest of the class follow after them. She muttered sarcastically, "Just who I wanted to deal with." Luna glanced over at her in confusion until the leader of the party spoke.
"Black."
"Potter," she said, turning around to show him an obviously fake smile. "I actually hoped you had forgotten about me over the summer. It would have made this year far more enjoyable."
The Potters' son sighed. "Do you have to act like such a bitch to everyone?"
"Have to?" she asked lightly. "No, but I see no point in wasting my limited patience on people whose opinions of me mean nothing."
Her words were clearly straining Potter's own patience. Good. Maybe he would take the hint and walk away before he – not for the first time – tempted her to murder him and his friends despite all the witnesses scattered about. "I was going to thank you for helping us fight Voldemort last year, but now I'm starting to rethink that decision."
"Me helping you?" she repeated with a touch of incredulity. "I seem to remember it being the other way around, but fine. You're welcome. If that's all you wanted…" The urge to wave her hand dismissively was mastered, but only just.
To her great displeasure, Potter did not take the hint. "Can I ask you a personal question? Why do you act like this?"
Her grin was sharp and brittle. "Act like what, exactly?"
"Like this!" he insisted blindly, throwing his arms into the air. His dramatics drew the attention of the other teens who had not yet walked out of earshot. "You were willing to fight Voldemort, so you can't be a terrible person at heart, but as soon as it was over – before it was over, even – you went back to acting the same way you always do. You're cold and rude to people who haven't done anything to you, you can't admit that anyone can do anything better than you, and you're perfectly happy to lie and cheat to make yourself look better no matter who it hurts. Why?"
He wanted to know why? Oh, that was a simple explanation: she was not some worthless member of the Light, not a weak-minded fool who was so busy not looking at how the world really worked that she had to be led around by the hand. She was a black witch, someone who had worn the mantle of a god and had wrapped herself in the cruel power of the Darkness, and she did what she willed. He was just a child bleating in fear at something he could never comprehend, and for that – among several other reasons – she despised him. But telling him that, even if she were willing to part with that secret, would do no good. He did not really want to hear her reasons and explanations; he just wanted to scold her into conforming to the pathetic black-and-white morality he had never outgrown where nice people were good and only did good things and mean people were bad and only did bad things. Where the villains could be beaten by love and the heroes all stood together to suckle at the teat of Albus Dumbledore. What was it with the damn Potters and their insistence on turning everyone into reckless, short-sighted, weak-hearted followers?
Hmm. There was an idea.
"You want to know why?" she asked in a saccharine voice, and around her her friends grimaced in unison. They knew that voice meant nothing good. "I could say it's because true good and evil are far rarer than storybooks make them out to be. More often, what one person thinks is good is really just something that benefits him, and what he considers evil he does not like. I could say I am not rude to everyone. I'm rude to you because I don't like you, I don't like your mother, and I outright despise your father, yet you insist on bothering me anyway. We would both be much happier if you would just leave me alone." She gave him a nasty smile and leaned a little closer. Their audience was paying attention; good. "But what I think I'll say instead is that you irritate me because you're a nasty coward who calls himself brave and good."
"What did you say?!" Weasley demanded.
"You heard me." Her eyes swept over the gathered students. "I gave you a chance, remember? I put myself in danger so you could bring down You-Know-Who. All you had to do to end this war was curse him, but you couldn't do it. No, you decided to spare him instead!" The crowd started to mutter quietly, then not-so-quietly, and Potter stared at her in confusion that rapidly turned into disbelief. Yes, she was going to take the weak-heartedness he had displayed during the battle in Hogsmeade and turn it against him, and if it twisted the conversation away from what he had planned to discuss, so much the better. Like she had told him, she had no patience to waste on irritants like him. "How many people have died between then and now, I wonder? How many people will die in the future at his command? Their blood is on your hands. All you had to do was take the shot," she bit out, "but you didn't. When forced to choose between You-Know-Who and the world, you chose him. And you dare call anyone else evil?"
Potter took a step closer, his teeth gritted. "That's not what happened, and you know it."
"That's exactly what happened! What was it you said? It wouldn't be 'decent' to put him down like a rabid dog? No, of course, it's much more moral to stand aside and do nothing." She stepped away and shrugged, acting for all the world as though she had not just accused him of being a closeted Death Eater sympathizer. Granger, at least, seemed to understand the consequences of that revelation, and the sight of the increasingly agitated teenagers around them made her eyes grow wide. "I hope that answers your question."
Jerking her head down the corridor, she and her friends beat a hasty exit before the wolves had a chance to fall upon them, too.
Without a fourth-period class to occupy the next ninety minutes, Jen was able to make decent headway on her translations for Babbling before it was time for her last class of the day: Potions.
She had to wonder what Snape would be like this year. It was no secret that he had had designs on the Defense Against the Dark Arts post for years, and for that dream to once more be snatched out from within his grasp? It was enough that he might be very, very nasty. On the other hand, this was the NEWT-level course, and with his exacting standards, there would be no one around that he could not tolerate. If nothing else, they were all smart enough and skilled enough that they could focus on their brewing and give him fewer targets to lash out against.
Finding herself in the dungeons several minutes early, she was beyond shocked to see her second-years pour out wearing smiles of all things on their faces. Several of the kids waved when they spotted her, and she could only wave back numbly. Snape terrified the younger children; he had been placed on probation the previous year for that very reason! What in the Baron's name could have happened over the summer for those same students to be happy?!
Her question was answered when a door farther down the hallway opened and the wizard in question stepped out.
"I was wondering what happened to you over the summer," she said in a teasing lilt once he walked over. "Baby Hufflepuffs came out smiling! I was worried you had experienced some event that had left you traumatized. Petted a puppy or smelled some roses or found a lover. The horror."
"Don't you have class you were supposed to be in?" he shot back, though with far less of a bite than she normally heard in his voice. "Some reason to be anywhere but here?"
"Nope."
There was, thankfully, someone inside the room waiting for Snape, a seventh-year Slytherin whom she did not know. It was reassuring to know that thirty second-years had not been left alone to flounder through the myriad dangers of Potions alone. The assistant passed a few rolls of parchment over and told Snape that the students' vials were in the box on the floor by the desk, and then he took off for his own class. "As you have probably guessed," the black-garbed wizard said before she could say anything, "Marchbanks was far more amenable to my request of letting some seventh-years help teach the first and second years of Potions than Dumbledore was. It means I don't have to bother catching all their idiotic mistakes, and I made sure the rewards I offered were enough that it does not look like I am taking advantage."
"And you get to take the period off."
"Only the second half," he denied. "By that point, any problems that were likely to arise would have been minor ones, so I could leave to get some peace and quiet and start grading essays without worrying about any potential disasters."
Jen nodded agreeably. She had no idea if that was true or not, but even if he was foisting the entire job onto the younger wizard, it was really not her place to cry foul. No, something else he had said was what caught her interest. "What do you mean by rewards?"
"Nothing monetary or unprofessional," he dismissed with a lazy wave of his hand. "A degree of leniency with their essays because I am taking away time they could be using to study, and for those who are interested in research, an opportunity to assist me in my experiments. It is amazing what having your name on an article in The Practical Potioneer can do for getting into one of the more competitive Potions Masteries."
By this point, some of the other sixth-years started filtering in, and she stepped away to set up her own workstation. Potter and Weasley did not walk in, which she considered a very good thing, but Granger glared enough for all three of them when she spotted Jen. Everyone was present and situated when the bells rang, which was for the best since the door immediately slammed shut and locked itself. "This is NEWT-level Potions," Snape said without preamble. "To be here, you achieved an Outstanding on your OWL exam. After five years, you have finally proven that you are not total incompetents and fools. Or, at least, that you can be trusted with a cauldron without killing yourselves.
"That does not mean you are now true potioneers. No, you are still far away from that honor, despite how large your egos have undoubtedly grown since receiving your results. But!" The entire class jumped in surprise when he shouted and whirled around, one finger raised in the air. "Perhaps you can be. Not today, not tomorrow, but maybe by the time you leave this school, I will not be completely ashamed to admit that I taught you. Some of you, some very small number, I might even be willing to call colleagues in the not-too-distant future. I doubt it, but if you want to make it your goal to prove me wrong?" He shrugged. "Who am I to deny you? Your own failures will do a far better job at putting you in your places than I can."
Jen was not the only one grinning in spite of the hefty doses of condescension mixed in with that introduction. Considering the way Snape normally talked to his classes, this was positively encouraging! Then again, how many people in this class had gotten as good at potions as they were by focusing on how much they wanted the 'dungeon bat' to eat his words? Maybe Snape did know what he was doing with his teaching style, where the older years were concerned if nothing else.
Or maybe he had adjusted his approach after Umbridge put him on probation. He no longer had Dumbledore sticking up for him regardless of what he said or did, after all.
"We have wasted enough time already," the professor continued. A wave of his wand made writing appear on the chalkboard at the front of the room. "I have been forced to coddle you over the last few years, but that stops here. Now you will have no one to rely on but yourselves. You have the directions; you know where the ingredients are. Begin."
Ugh, finally. This should be the last courting-dating-whatever-related scene for the next several chapters. This subplot has taken up far too much of the story's focus lately.
Silently Watches out.
