One Day at a Time
Diagon Alley
I didn't owl Tarazet immediately. I didn't owl him for a couple of weeks, actually, and then I only wrote a couple of sentences.
Tarazet,
I'm sorry we got into a fight. Maybe we can have lunch or something, although I'm busy until after the end of Hogwarts' break. Don't come unexpectedly onto Hogwarts' grounds again.
Liseli
I was actually expecting to have plenty of free time during the break, but I was certainly in no rush to see him again. My owl quickly arrived back with a small piece of parchment attached to its leg.
Liseli,
I'm also sorry that we fought. Lunch sounds nice; we can catch up like old times. Does The Three Broomsticks sound good? I don't have any specific plans, so you can set the date.
Tarazet
I wrote back with a time and date and said "The Hog's Head. Not the Three Broomsticks." I didn't want anybody to see me with him, and The Hog's Head was much less populated. Still, I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that it would be at least a month before I would have to see him. The rest of the weeks before Winter Break passed smoothly, excluding the students' complaints that it was unfair for me to give them a large test directly before the break. Near the beginning of break, I decided to go to the Flourish and Blott's located in Diagon Alley and I was scanning the shelves when I heard a familiar voice.
"Come on, Hermione, it's break. Break. As in 'Take a break from studying.'"
"I am not studying. I just want something to read for fun," I heard the bushy-haired girls' voice. "And besides, even if I was studying, what would be wrong with that? You could do with studying a bit more, Ron." I smiled at their topic of conversation, and continued reading the book titles in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the aforementioned girl turn into the aisle I was standing in. "Hello, Professor," she greeted me, clearly surprised to be seeing me during break.
The other two thirds of their trio turned into the same aisle and gave me the same mildly surprised greeting. They were with a tired-looking man who had light brown hair streaked with grey. "What are you doing here, Professor?" Harry asked in a friendly tone.
"I'm looking for some supplemental reading materials for your class," I explained. "I feel that the chapter on counter-hexes isn't in-depth enough."
"Are you the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor?" the man with them asked.
"Why yes I am. My name's Liseli Colburn," I said, holding out my hand.
"I'm Remus Lupin, it's a pleasure to meet you," he smiled, shaking my hand. "I taught Defense Against the Dark Arts for a year at Hogwarts."
"I remember reading your reports on your classes," I smiled excitedly. "Yours was the only one with neat handwriting."
He laughed. "I suppose that's a compliment, so thank you."
"We were going to go to lunch after this," Hermione nervously started. "Would you like to join us, Professor Colburn?"
I happily agreed, and all of us continued looking for the books we wanted, after which we walked to The Leaky Cauldron.
"You know, you look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?" Lupin asked, scrutinizing my face.
"No, I don't believe so," I said calmly, masking my slight nervousness. "We were at Hogwarts at the same time, though, so you might have seen me in the hallways."
Lupin nodded but seemed unconvinced. Besides giving me a couple quick quizzical glances during the meal, he dropped that topic and moved onto others. At one point, the trio was talking excitedly about their plans for Christmas, and I got the impression that they were all living together over the break. In that context, I heard them say the words "Grimmauld Place," and I had to keep myself from releasing a small gasp as I felt my heartbeat speed up. The conversation wandered again, though, and soon we were talking about other things. At the end of the meal I saw Lupin looking at me again, when a look of realization crossed his face.
"I know where I've seen you before!" he exclaimed. "You were Regulus Black's girlfriend."
I saw Harry, Ron and Hermione simultaneously turn to look at me with only slightly masked looks of shock. I froze, but managed to maintain a neutral facial expression, my mind racing as to how to distance myself from the known Death Eater. I intentionally frowned and slowly stated, "We only dated for a bit. It wasn't very serious."
Lupin frowned slightly, clearly thinking. "But there was talk of marriage, wasn't there?" Damn, there goes that approach, I thought.
"Traditional pureblood families always try and rush their children into marriages," I explained. That was true at least—Deneb's wife, for example, had dropped out of Hogwarts to marry him. "I certainly didn't agree with that, and I had no intention of marrying him."
"But you did date Sirius's brother? You dated a Death Eater?" Harry was no longer doing a very good job containing his shock, and he was starting to become angry.
"I ought to remind you that Regulus was not a Death Eater from the day he was born," my voice had a severely annoyed, even angry tone. "It's rarely known who is a Death Eater, until they're killed or imprisoned. As far as his views on pureblood supremacy and Muggle-born wizards and witches, that was one of the many issues where we had drastically different opinions, and I would expect all of you to know that by now," I finished.
They seemed to realize that they had started to overreact, for there was an embarrassed silence before Harry said, "I didn't mean to imply that you were a pureblood supremacist, professor. I'm sorry, I was just surprised. I haven't exactly heard the best things about Regulus."
"It's alright, I just don't want you to walk away thinking that I shared his beliefs," I calmed down slightly.
We were quiet for a moment, before Ron attempted to break the awkward silence, "So…how about those Chudley Cannons?"
We delicately went onto the subject of Quidditch and, all in all, we managed to end the conversation on a positive note, so that when we split off it was without any detrimental beliefs or awkward feelings. I left for my next errand and when I walked into Slug and Jiggers Apothecary, I accidentally bumped into someone nearby one of the store's displays. "Sorry," I said disinterestedly, not bothering to look at the person I was apologizing to.
"Hello, Colburn," I heard a cool voice say.
Startled, I looked up to see a familiar hook nose and curtains of greasy hair. "Hello, Snape. Fancy seeing you here." I regretted the last sentence as soon as I said it. I mean, really, of all the stores in the Wizarding World this is the one he'd be most likely to be in, and I was sure that he was going to point that out—
"I am the Potions Master at Hogwarts," he said pointedly.
"I'm aware of that," I mentally winced.
"What business do you have here?" he asked in his standard bored tone. It seemed to be one of the few tones he ever used, and I was starting to think that he must just always conceal his emotions, for no one could possibly find everything in the world that boring.
"I'm buying ingredients so I can make the potion to copy some pages," I held up the textbook I had just bought.
"Why on earth would you do that?" he drawled, as though I was missing something very obvious. Before I could ask what he meant, he continued on. "The potions cupboards have plenty of ingredients. They're not mine, they're Hogwarts'."
"Oh," I said, feeling quite stupid. "I didn't know that," I sheepishly added.
"Clearly." His eyes flickered to the textbook I was holding. "What are you using that textbook for?"
"I'm going to use this book's chapter on counter-hexes. It's more in depth than the one the students have right now," I explained matter-of-factly.
"Really, you think so?" he drawled. "I find that the book by Nero Nex explains things much better. Nex has a chapter on counter-hexes, and then a whole other chapter on counter-curses. He also has a unit on when to use potions and when to use charms to treat the after-effects of a curse." Snape glanced at the potions ingredients in-front of him, while a look of indecision crossed his face. "I'm almost done," he hesitated. "We can go to the bookstore together." I felt like retorting that maybe I did not want to go to the bookstore with him, but I held my tongue. Snape wasn't exactly the social type, so I got the feeling that he was doing me a favor, even if he didn't say so specifically. He went to the front of the store and bought a small bag of what looked like shrunken glass marbles, before we walked back to Flourish and Blott's together. Once there, he found Nex's book quickly, and then took to scanning the shelves, pulling out other books which he believed were well-written.
Part of me felt that Snape was dictating what I should do in my class, and was quite offended at this. A smaller part of me couldn't help but be terribly impressed that Snape was so well read. After that, neither of us had anything left to do at Diagon Alley, so we both apparated to Hogsmeade, which was the closest specific location outside of Hogwarts' anti-apparation field.
"So, do a lot of professors stay for Christmas day?" I asked, curious what the trend was.
"Most," he replied succinctly. "Are you going to see Deneb?" he asked, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
"No, Deneb's probably trying to invite prestigious people to his house for Christmas Day. He always does that, try to suck up to the big shots," I explained. "I wouldn't want to go even if I was invited, though."
"I take it your dinner with him a couple of weeks ago didn't go very well?" Snape drawled.
"His wife spent the entire time boasting, and he spent the entire time trying to manipulate me," I said bitterly. "So, no." I looked at Snape suspiciously and suddenly wondered if he had some alternative motive for asking.
He met my eyes and added with a frown, "I'm not Deneb. I'm not asking how the dinner went for my own benefit."
Embarrassed, I looked away. "Sorry, talking about Deneb always puts me on my guard."
"It's fine," he replied succinctly, again.
"So are you seeing family on Christmas Day?" I asked, deciding to continue the conversation.
"No." Snape seemed to be one for short responses today. "I don't have any remaining family," he barely elaborated.
"Oh. Sorry," I said rather roughly, feeling that Snape would not be one for a pity-filled voice.
"I'm not," he said bitterly. Merlin, it sounds like his relationship with his family is almost as bad as my relationship with my family, I mused. No wonder he was so sympathetic about Deneb earlier.
…
Disclaimer: So I'm getting sort of tired of writing a disclaimer after each chapter so I'm just going to have this be a broad disclaimer for every remaining chapter: I don't own anything from Harry Potter's world; that honor belongs to J.K. Rowling.
A/N: Thanks a million to Mywaychan and argyle owl for reviewing! Comments, critiques, just letting me know that somebody's reading, they're all really appreciated. On another note, I decided that I wanted to combine this chapter with the next chapter, but that would mess up my numbering system on my computer so instead I'm just doing a double update.