Disclaimer: If I owned the Harry Potter verse and its characters, would I be writing FANfiction? No, I'd be too busy diving in a swimming pool filled with hundred dollar bills—I mean (cough) giving money to charity.
Author's Note: This story starts from the perspective of an original character who had the misfortune (in her mind) to find herself in the body of one Hermione Granger, age 12. It may get much weirder, as I am toying with the idea of an awkward, Lolita-esque unrequited or unresolved romance with Professor Severus Snape. She's certainly impressed by him at first glance. You have been warned.
Sectumsempra: Cut Off, Forever
Chapter the Second:
A Day in the Life
A few hours later, I'm awoken by an outpouring of other kids from the portrait hole. They range from around my age (well, what appears to be my age, anyway) to nearly eighteen. One of the girls from my dorm whisks me away to class with her, and I go along bemusedly.
Throughout the whole day, I follow the other girls from my dorm and try to keep up, despite having no idea what's going on. I seem to be missing a few things, most notably, ANY MEMORY AT ALL OF THIS PLACE AND WHY, PRECISELY, I'M HERE, but also some books (on spells? so trippy), a wand, and a hat of the pointy variety.
The last class, on this particular day, appears to be called Potions. This much I've gathered from following "Lavender" and "Parvati" around—they're two of the girls from my—or Hermione's, rather—dorm, and they seem to know what's up, though my cluelessness seems to worry them. Two boys, a red-haired one and a skinny one with dorky glasses, have been trying to talk to me in each of our classes, I think (they've been in all the same ones as me), but every time, there was either a distraction or the teacher noticed and told them off for it. Maybe they like to make fun of me; maybe they're my friends—I don't know. Neither do I want to find out: knowing as little as I do, either situation is potentially very problematic.
Lavender, Parvati, and I are not the first to arrive in the disturbingly dungeon-like Potions classroom (shouldn't there be a law against having children's classes in a dungeon? wouldn't that be deeply traumatizing to a child's overactive imagination?); several unfamiliar kids (again, about twelve—guess there aren't any mixed-age classes here, are there?) stand grouped around tables, setting out cauldrons, kits of weird substances, and (how surprising!) more books.
A man dressed in great billowing drapes of black robes is standing with his back turned to us, talking with one of the groups of children already present. Or rather, he listens patiently as a pale, rather ferret-faced blond boy whines about something. All I catch is the word "Potter" before the man in black turns around to face the doorway, and I get my first good look at him.
Sleek black hair hangs in sheets around his face, which despite the somewhat sickly, pale yellowish tinge and the strong, hawkish nose is not altogether unappealing. He looks only about ten years older than me—than my real self, I mean. His black eyes seem to bore into my soul—he looks at me suspiciously, for a second, almost as though he knows that I am not who I appear to be. The next moment, the illusion is gone; just another ill-tempered and suspicious teacher, if rather more ill-tempered and suspicious than any of the others were, as his behavior throughout the lesson proves.
The other students call him "Professor Snape" and "sir" with a fearful note to the old-fashioned formality that I hadn't sensed in any of our other classes. It seems he's intimidated them pretty effectively. All through the lesson he's especially nasty to the skinny boy with glasses who continues to try to get my attention in this class as well. From some of Professor Snape's snide comments I gather that he thinks the boy, whose name turns out to be "Harry Potter," has an opinion of himself that is far too puffed up for his own good. Me, Snape ignores for the most part, after deploring my lack of any supplies at all and "taking points" away from "Gryffindor" which has happened, for the same reason, in all my other classes as well. Lavender and Parvati chimed in at that point on my behalf, for which I am grateful, saying that I hadn't been myself since last night, but I don't think Snape heard them.
I find my mind wandering after about half an hour of everyone silently mixing up ingredients in their cauldrons like a wacky chemistry experiment (Lavender and Parvati having exasperatedly given up asking for my advice after I shrugged at them a couple of times). I wonder about why I'm here, in this body, at this place; I wonder if I'm not probably in shock from the surrealism of it all; I wonder about the skinny Harry Potter kid and his red-haired friend, and why they want to talk to me (rather quickly, though, I stop wondering this particular thing, as Harry notices me staring and starts making signs at me; hopefully he'll just think I'm giving him the cold shoulder); and the last thing I find myself wondering, as the bell rings for the end of class, is what Professor Snape's first name could be…?