Severus went to King's Cross Station early the next morning, making sure to get there at 9 sharp. However, since his train schedule had changed at the last moment, and the train was now departing at 8 sharp, there was really no point in that at all. Some old man who breathed too loud sat next to him on a gum-besodden bench and remarked how Severus looked like one of the weird people from the 8 o' clock train, who had disappeared through a barrier at the last moment. Severus took a moment to digest this tidbit, and then realized that it meant he would be coming to Hogwarts later than expected.

Going back to his house, Severus tried out plan B for this pain in the ass operation, which was essentially to get on his broom and try to fly to Hogwarts. This did not make him feel a-ok, considering that Severus's broomophobia from years past was still alive and well as ever. Trying to swallow his impending panic attack, Severus searched around his house for his broom, but it was nowhere to be found.

"This is absurd," he muttered, breathing a most frustrated breath out his nose. It was then that he remembered he'd donated his broom to the We Care a Whole Lot foundation last year. Except Severus did not actually Care a Whole Lot, and the only reason he'd donated that thing in the first place was that he thought he would never have a reason to use it again.

Severus made himself a cup of peas, took one bite and grimaced. He looked at the expiration date and then threw it in the trash at lightning speed. One of his windows was left open and he could hear someone's television playing The Swan Princess. His stomach started feeling funny again and he bent out the window just in time.

It was approximately o' dark thirty when Severus arrived at Hogwarts. He had had to take the Knight Bus, and when the when the weird shriveled head next to the driver said it was "GOING TO BE A BUUUUMPY ride!" it wasn't kidding. Severus threw up two more times and had to hold onto a bed railing, concentrating on whether or not that shriveled head was canon or not to keep from passing out. Once an old lady brushed unnecessarily close past him, talking very loudly about how she forgot the last item on her grocery list. He wondered if she'd ever heard of classroom voices.

When the bus reached Hogsmeade, the driver informed Severus that actually, the Knight Bus wasn't authorized on school property, which Severus thought was a real dumb rule. He let Severus off next to that lame tavern Madame Rosmerta, who was far too into low cut tops for her own good, owned. He walked the rest of way with a cramp in his stomach, pretending he had pneumonia.

When Severus reached the weird school he always forgot the name of, he started to stomp up the path, but cut to walking on the grass, since the sound the pebbles made under his feet was making him feel a little faint. He reached the solid oaken doors of the castle and passed through them, pretending he was a cripple hobbling towards sanctuary, like he thought he remembered in some movie about a hunchback he'd never finished watching.

"Wait!" said a muffled voice behind him, and Severus turned to see Hagrid blunder at astonishing speed through the door on his heels, nearly knocking him down in his rush across the courtyard. He mumbled something through his beard about holding the door, panting hard on his way up the steps on his way indoors. Severus really had no clue what that was about, since the door had been propped open for them. He wondered for the fiftieth time what the purpose of a gamekeeper actually was, and if they were straining funds keeping that guy here. You might think Severus was being a bit stingy here, but really, the first place those funds were coming from was his own salary, which he knew for a fact Dumbledore took from when he wanted school reforms or something from the snack machine.

The first person Severus ran into was Professor McGonagall, who honked a too-loud greeting at him.

"Severus, I did not see you on the teacher's train this morning!" she hollered. Severus knew for a fact that she did not know what a classroom voice was.

"I missed the train, Minerva," he mumbled, trying to scoot around her, but McGonagall tried to scoot around him at the same moment, so they did that thing where you look like you're dancing in the hall for two minutes, which Severus felt made him look like a darn fool.

"Staff meeting is down here!" Flitwick chortled at them, passing by on their left. He was clearly using his goblin heritage to act superior about his sense of direction.

McGonagall gave Severus a brief smirky smile which clearly told him, I was going the right way and you weren't, but Severus ignored that in favor of the sinking sensation in his already fast dying stomach.

"There is a staff meeting today?"

"There's a staff meeting at the beginning of every year, Severus," Flitwick, who Severus swore should have been out of earshot by now, put in.

"Yes," he said rather acidly, "BUT…I thought it would be over by now. Seeing as I am late and all."

A raucous bit of laughter sounded from down the hall. It sounded unmistakably like Dumbledore.

"Severus, you know what they say. It's not over until the fat lady sings!" said the Headmaster, still clean out of sight, proving that he'd been eavesdropping on their entire conversation. With a clear case of the cranks, Severus began to walk towards the door he heard Dumbledore's voice coming from. McGonagall walked behind him counting off school supplies under her breath and occasionally stepping too close to Severus's heel. Once his shoe almost fell off from that and while he stumbled to get back into it, McGonagall bypassed him and went into the staff room. Professor Sinistra, who he suspected had never taught a class, came up behind him and also passed, closing the door behind her. Severus finally got his pain in the ass shoe back on his foot and went to open the door. It was locked. He knocked at it rather more violently than was necessary. When it opened a second later, he found himself staring into Dumbledore's beard, which was statically attracted to his robes.

Severus backed away. The beard followed.

"Why don't you come in, Severus?" Dumbledore said, and he moved forward, forcing Severus to cut a wide berth around the beard and bolt to a seat before he could close the distance. Dumbledore merely looked at him all twinkle-ish. His beard was back flat against his chest.

"Well now," Dumbledore began, after a space of fifteen minutes in which he pretended to be doing some last-minute paperwork up against the wall as an excuse to polish off the last of a can of lemon drops. "This year at school, I'm not going to introduce any changes, because I think we can all agree that last year went exceedingly well."

Severus stared at him through slitted eyes, but Dumbledore was looking at every chair but his. In the chair in front of Severus, Professor Trelawney was rocking back and forth. Every time she went too far to the left, he couldn't see Dumbledore anymore. He tried to scoot his low armchair to the side, but it was too heavy and made a GONK sound. Professor Binns jumped and went through the ceiling.

"I would ask what you have all been up to over the summer" (Professor Sprout raised her hand. She had a Caribbean postcard in her lap.) "but we only have time for one story. This summer, I tried out some new margaritas and ironed my beard. There. Now, down to business." Dumbledore started walking between all of their chairs, passing out some hefty looking packets.

"These are the staff rules and regulations. Even though I haven't changed any of them since Professor Dippet wrote them, I want us all to refresh our memories."

He then decided to employ the popcorn method to give everyone a chance to read out loud. Severus hated the popcorn method because it made him feel tense. McGonagall called on him once and he jumped and then read a sentence and passed it on to Professor Vector, who complained about how he'd only read one line.

"Read the whole thing, Severus," Dumbledore said, so Severus had to read a whole dumb paragraph. After that, people kept reading only a sentence and then popcorning him, but Dumbledore didn't say anything, so Severus got real steamed and started reading his paragraphs way too fast and angry. At the end, his mouth was very dry and McGonagall was shaking her head two seats down from him. Dumbledore had spaced out on something in the corner.

The door to the staff room broke open at that instant, and someone stumbled through. The someone was had sickeningly blonde curls that Severus mostly thought of as Macaroni Hair, and his robes looked like someone had thrown up cotton candy all over him. The whole staff room waited with bated breath to have this new form of madness explained to them. It took Dumbledore a while to register the intrusion.

"Gilderoy!" he exclaimed suddenly. "It's so good that you were able to make it! Would you mind fixing the door for us?"

The Macaroni Head turned to the door and mumbled some words that sounded like "Deathly Door Delapidum!", which was totally not a spell. The door, predictably, remained unfixed. Dumbledore chuckled.

"Never mind for now," he said, sounding curiously grandfatherly. "Why don't you introduce yourself to the rest of the staff?" He gestured around at them all, and then pointed at the Macaroni Head. "This is Gilderoy Lockhart, and he will be bravely taking on the cursed Defense Against the Dark Arts position this year," he announced grandly, doing all the work for the Macaroni Head, who just smiled way too big around at them all. Two things struck Severus just then. One, that he was sure Dumbledore wasn't supposed to announce that the Defense job was cursed out loud like that, and two, that the Macaroni Head's teeth were like the fake ones illustrators liked to make clowns have, and reminded Severus of the smell of dentist gloves. He'd only been to a dentist once, and it was not a pleasing experience. They'd told him he had 'a lot of work to do', and made him schedule two billion other appointments. Severus never came back. He'd only gone in the first place because Dumbledore had given him a gift certificate.

The Macaroni Head had been blabbering something about himself for a while now, and now he stopped to do a strange dance in the middle of the room, kicking up his legs real high as he did so and lifting up his robes to dangerous heights. Severus gave his back a what the hell look.

"And THAT'S the Irish Jig!" the Macaroni Head told them, before taking a load of books out of his single pocket and passing them around to everyone, advertising 'free autographs!' in each one. Severus waited until the end of the staff meeting and went up to Dumbledore to ask him whether he was serious about this and/or whether he could see the Macaroni Head's application papers, but as soon as the meeting ended, Dumbledore made a beeline for the broken door and ran through that shambles all the way back to his office. Severus noticed he wasn't wearing shoes, and thought he should be more careful of splinters, because really. He was getting really annoyed with today in general and wanted to give the Macaroni Head a piece of his mind. After nearly everyone else had left, he marched up to that guy and stared him lividly in the face.

"I don't know what you're up to, Lockhart," Severus snarled, " But I happen to doubt your criteria."

The Macaroni Head looked unperturbed. "I know ten zillion spells, you know," he said, winking at Severus like they had a conspiracy between them and filling up a Dixie cup to the very brim with water from the gurgle machine no one used.

"Right," breathed Severus. "Then perhaps you can fix that door for me."

The Macaroni Head put his water on the counter and went to the bathroom. He never came back, even though Severus waited in the staff room for him for thirty minutes. He thought he rather should have expected something fishy, in hindsight, and when he came back to his chambers, his legs hurt and his bed smelled like mold because the house elves had forgotten the dungeons were also rooms and didn't change the sheets.

a/n: please review if you liked! : )