Exams
Exam time, being the busiest of the year, always took Minerva's concentration away from the students. Indeed, after the third-years' practical examination on Wednesday morning, the deputy headmistress almost jumped in shock when one of her students knocked on her office door shortly after she had entered it. She hesitated, just for a moment, whether she was ready for a discussion in-between the execution of one exam and the preparation for the next, but the woman inside her, not the teacher, decided to be allowing.
"Enter," she said, and, upon a sullen-looking Sirius Black's arrival, added, "but be quick. I have little time."
Black shrugged and slumped himself on a chair without invitation, kicking the door shut behind him with the tiniest movement of his foot. Minerva gave him a disapproving frown, just for good measure. Educating young men in their sullen phase between thirteen and fifteen did about as much good as the attempt to discuss any actual content in a classroom full of pubescent fourth-years.
"I am to report to you, Professor," said the young Black after a moment's gruff silence. "Professor Vector sends a little message. Would you like to hear?"
"I daresay I do not have much of a choice," Minerva replied, lowering herself in the chair behind her desk with an unsuppressed sigh. Black knew he was tiring her and he was very well supposed to. "What did you do this time?"
"Fight," replied her student, sounding quite unconcerned though still sullen. "Oh, and I tried to cheat during the Defence Against the Dark Arts exam. Do you want the message word by word?"
"With the right intonation, please," Minerva said in cynic resignation. "But without gestures."
The boy, who had raised from his chair already, sat down again with a look of vague disappointment on his face.
"Professor Vector would like you to know," he said, "that 'your students are a bunch of self-possessed, inconsiderate, socially inept rogues, whose only concern lies in the destruction of a carefully built up hierarchy-system…' no, wait. She said 'class structure'. Or something."
Minerva rolled her eyes. She could not help it. Stochastica Vector had taken Alexander Fumes's position for the time being, ever since the former soldier had left the school, taking all his belongings with him. She was the only Slytherin staff member capable of supervising the Potions exams with the necessary competence, of course, and Minerva knew she had received a small scale time-turner for this specific purpose.
"That is her message?" she asked the student before her, trying to sound neutral instead of affronted.
"I don't think she intended me to deliver every word," young Black grinned. "Her essential point seems to be that she regards my behaviour as inappropriate for an examination situation, though."
"Which is spot on, presumably," Minerva said, rubbing her face with the tips of all ten fingers. "What did you do?"
"I tried to thwart the cheating spells by giving my answers to Sandra Abbott from Ravenclaw," said the boy proudly.
"But she wasn't in your class!" Minerva observed. "Whatever gave you the idea that the answers would be useful to Miss Abbott in the first place?"
"The classes are different, but the exams deal with the same content, don't they?"
His downright, open answer surprised her.
"Yes, well, I suppose, but…"
"I just wanted to know if it was theoretically possible," said Sirius Black apologetically. "It's not like she needs it anyway."
"I am aware that she doesn't," Minerva said thinly. "She has been my student for three years now, you know."
"Professor Vector seemed to think otherwise," Black said darkly. "She said if we Gryffindors didn't stop trying to question authority, she would personally see to it that the house was replaced by a delegation of House-Elf exchange students."
"Ah, yes, very funny," Minerva mumbled. "Quite Stochastica's style, I must say. Did she say anything else?"
"No," replied the boy flatly. "Only that you were to put me in detention – again."
"Ah, but I daresay that would bore you, wouldn't it?" Minerva said sarcastically. "Doing lines all by yourself, without your best friend to keep you company?"
"I am not looking forward to it, if that's what you mean," said the boy, frowning.
"What I mean," said Minerva, getting up and starting to gather her papers, "is that I have no time whatsoever to supervise any kind of detention at the moment. And nor, I wager, does Professor Vector. Incidentally, I believe there is a statute somewhere saying that if students manage to thwart the anti-cheating spells, it means their achievement is so great that it is justified to give them the mark they earned this way."
"Including Sandra?" young Black marveled.
"Specifically Sandra," replied the deputy headmistress, "seeing as this particular bit of security magic works from her side in the first place. Whatever you told her, she won't have understood a single correct word. The spell scrambles up the content of your speech act – on the risk that you are going to use this piece of information against us next year."
She gave him a mild smile, making clear that there was no possible way for him to come up with a feasible solution. The boy's expression said that he thought he already had one.
Only mildly disquieted, Minerva dismissed her visitor from her office only minutes later. The rest of this day's examinations were no less stressful than the morning ones had been, but somehow the thought of a nice cup of tea with Emeric and Mandy in the staff room had held up her spirits to the very end. Mandy, she knew, had examined a rather insufferable bunch of Slytherin sixth-years who were due for their NEWTs in less than a year's time. And Emeric's schedule had been full of practicals. She was therefore not very surprised to find both her colleagues slumped together in their chairs as though the world had just promised to come to a sudden and painful end. The staff room was otherwise empty and Minerva decided to liven up the mood by conjuring a box of biscuits and a tea tray. She did not get as far as to take out her wand, however. When Mandy spotted her, she quickly jumped into a standing position again, as though having waited for her friend and colleague to appear.
"Minerva, you won't believe what has happened! A student is missing!"
The deputy headmistress frowned. "During exam week? That's new. Who? Did they miss any exams?"
"He vanished after the last one," Emeric squeaked, excitement written all over his tiny face. "Goodness knows, I fear it might be my fault..."
"It is mine..." Mandy interrupted, but Minerva refused to permit this kind of discussion even to erupt.
"Who is it?"
"Snape," sighed Mandy, her chubby arms slumping down on both sides. "Again. I'm sorry, Minerva. I know you are getting positively sick of..."
"Why did he leave?" asked Minerva sharply, refusing to let her exasperation show.
"We don't well know," Mandy began, but Emeric placed both hands on the table in front of him with such vigour that the two women had no chance but to turn around and let him speak.
"It is my fault!" he said again, more persistently this time. "I did not check all my students' boggarts before using them in the practical Defence examination. We had a boggart corporalis. Snape had one, to be exact."
Minerva felt the blood drain from her cheeks. "Are you quite sure?" she whispered.
"Saw him myself," Emeric replied darkly. "Only too late, though. You wouldn't believe the kind of state the boy was in when I realised something was wrong.
"Did he... try to kill him?" Minerva asked, shaking from head to toe now.
"I don't know his exact intention, but the mere fact that he could touch his opposite seemed to have paralysed the boy. He was entirely under the boggart's control when I found him."
"Merlin's Beard," Minerva whispered. "He did have his theoretical Transfiguration exam afterwards – I was wondering why he looked so pale."
"I gave him some sweets," Emeric said uneasily. "They seemed to calm him down. But something the boggart did or said must have driven him away now. We checked all the enchanted maps. He isn't on Hogwarts grounds any more.
Minerva nodded slowly, although her mind was racing. Severus Snape's boggart could be anything, from a magical creature he had encountered in one of his father's many books to a dying woman telling him her death was his fault alone. She was not sure whether she wanted to hear the answer and suddenly felt that it was probably irrelevant, too.
"I'll go and look for him," she said firmly, grabbing her cloak. "My earliest exam is tomorrow at eleven o'clock. I am sure the two of you will be up much earlier, won't you?"
Her two colleagues nodded, mutely.
"Well then, I shan't lose any time," Minerva said resolutely. "I'll use the basement tunnel, as I am almost certain he will have used it. It's a favoured exit amongst Slytherins."
"Thank you, Minerva," squeaked Emeric Flitwick, sounding very relieved.
"I'll accompany you downstairs," Mandy Sprout said quietly.