Chapter 13

Slytherins

Charity returned to her office one December day to find an important-looking envelope on her desk. It was thick and purple with a gold wax seal bearing the initials HC. She opened the envelope to find an elaborate invitation to Professor Slughorn's Christmas party. It was to take place in his office on the last evening of the term, the night before everyone departed for the Christmas holiday. On the corner of Charity's invitation was scribbled a note:

Tell your father that cocktails will begin at 20:00 sharp. Black tie optional.

She flipped over the envelope to examine it more closely and first noticed that it had been addressed to:

Mr. Ralph Burbage and guest

Well, that made more sense. Professor Slughorn hadn't given Charity so much as a fleeting glance until Professor Flitwick had asked Charity about an acquisition her father's company was considering. Slughorn had turned to her with a new interest and said, "You mean to tell me you are Burbage as in daughter of Ralph Burbage? CFO Lailoken Publishing - U.K. Division?"

"Yes," Charity had answered.

"Well, my dear, why didn't you tell me? Oh, if your father and I could put our…what do the Muggles call them…rolodexes together…" he had salivated.

Charity was the ticket Slughorn needed to make yet more connections in the publishing industry. She was surprised when her father actually agreed to come to the party. She'd never heard her father speak of Horace Slughorn in anything other than a disdainful tone. He seemed to think of Slughorn as something of an opportunistic blowhard. Now that she'd seen Slughorn in action, she doubted that her conservative father would approve of his extravagant lifestyle either. Then she realized that the real reason her father had accepted the invitation was so that he'd be able to escort his daughter home for the holidays in an increasingly dangerous atmosphere.

Mr. Burbage opted out of the black tie and instead wore a very smart looking grey wool cloak to the party. Charity felt proud to have him at her side as they entered Slughorn's crowded office. She did not recognize most of the faces. The sheer size of the gathering gave Charity an appreciation of Slughorn's influence in the wizarding world. How on earth did he get all of these presumably important people to come all the way out to Hogwarts for his little soiree?

"Not surprised to see Slughorn's secured himself the most spacious accommodations," Mr. Burbage observed above the noise of several competing conversations. "This has got to be at least triple the size of your office."

"Yeah it is," Charity commented as she gazed around open-mouthed at the mass of festive bodies clustered into the large and suspiciously tall room. Slughorn even had a type of three-piece orchestra crammed into a far corner. Everyone and everything in the room took on an unnatural pallor in the dim lighting that reflected the dark red and green velvet draped around the room. Charity couldn't help but feel that insincerity hung in the room as thick as any of the decorations.

Slughorn emerged from the crowd soon after their arrival. Her father's eyes widened at Slughorn's tasseled velvet hat, but he was cordial, and after Slughorn complemented him on his delightful daughter, Charlotte, he allowed Slughorn to coax him across the room to meet some important people. Charity was left standing alone and grabbed a sparkling red drink from a wobbling tray as it passed near her. When she turned to see if there was anyone at all that she knew, she was surprised to see Snape standing no more than five feet from her. 'Since when did he become social?' she wondered. Snape looked equally surprised to see her. 'Probably doesn't think I'm important enough to be here,' Charity presumed. In truth, she wasn't important enough to be there, but her father was, and none of it was Snape's business anyway.

"Merry Christmas Professor Snape," she said as warmly as she could muster.

In typical fashion, Snape gave her a curt nod and quickly disappeared into the crowd. Charity became desperate to find someone to talk to and spotted Professor Trelawney leaning against a wall not too far away. She debated the relative evils of Trelawney's sherry-induced prophetic ramblings versus fighting her way through the crowd to find her father. Her father had gone in the opposite direction of Snape, so that made her choice easier. As she slowly made her way through the stuffy room, she passed trays and trays of fancy tartlets and pates. She thought how much more she would have preferred a big slab of triple layer chocolate cake just then.

At last she found her father, who introduced her to the man he was talking to - a Hector Smimby who claimed to have done undercover work for the Ministry in the past. She hoped the information he'd uncovered wasn't too terribly important since he appeared to be blabbing it all over the party. Charity stood quietly next to her father and absentmindedly gazed around the room. Mr. Smimby's voice became nothing more than a low drone mingling with all the other noises in the room. Through the sea of coiffed heads, Charity detected a pale face with long black hair across the room. He was looking in her direction. She momentarily locked eyes with Snape and saw something there that reminded her of the way he used to look at her. Her heart did a backflip, but no sooner had it righted itself than Snape turned abruptly away. She'd accepted weeks ago that Snape no longer wanted to be her friend, but why couldn't he even look at her?

The room suddenly became suffocating. The door was only a few feet away, and the cool hallway full of unshared air beckoned. Charity excused herself and walked out of Slughorn's office and into the deserted corridor. Moving away from the din of the party, she was able to wonder in peace why exactly Snape found her so abhorrent.

Was it just a coincidence that his new attitude had arrived just as he started teaching about the Dark Arts? She didn't think so. Spending so much time immersed in the dark subject must be getting to him, drudging up suppressed feelings and desires. Did he now regret that he'd shown Charity his Dark Mark last year? Did he worry that she knew too much? (That would be a first.) Charity began to consider that maybe, maybe, maybe her father had been right about Snape. But if she could honestly think this about him, then why, when she'd had briefly caught Snape's eye across the room, did she flash an image of the two of them alone in a dark corner under the mistletoe? And why couldn't she stop wishing it was more than just an image…

As she walked along, lost in these thoughts, her attention was caught by the painting of the ten girls having tea. She had all but forgotten about this painting that had been her reprieve two years ago when she was busy cleaning the castle with Filch in preparation for the Triwizard Tournament. The girls were scurrying about the room in which they were painted, making preparations for Christmas. They were busy hanging tea cups and candies on a pine tree that was propped at the edge of the room. Charity noticed that there were no corners in the room; the walls were rounded, suggesting that this room was located in a tower somewhere. Her eyes traveled over the canvas and she saw that the girls had also fashioned a crèche out of tea spoons and pinecones on the oak sideboard. The cake had been pushed to the edge of the table.

"Hey, I was just thinking about chocolate cake," Charity said aloud.

"Oh, hello!" one of the girls turned and said to her. "Merry Christmas."

"Yes, yes, Merry Christmas!" chimed in the others.

"Merry Christmas to you, too," said Charity. "Pretty tree."

"Why thank you dear. We use what we have, you know," replied the dark-eyed girl as she looped a tea-cup handle onto a branch.

"You had a tree?" Charity asked.

"That we borrowed from the painting of the Black Forest two floors up," explained a fair complected girl with auburn curls. "The trolls hiding among the trees are really quite generous when you get to know them." Charity imagined that these charming girls never had much trouble getting exactly what they wanted. Her shoulders slumped when she thought of how much she'd rather join them in the painting than go back to Slughorn's party.

"Why do you look so forlorn," asked a small sprightly girl.

"Do I? Well, I'm just confused about a boy, er, man," answered Charity.

"Hmph, sounds about right," sniffed the dark-eyed girl. "Notice there are no boys or men invited here."

Just as she finished her sentence, a stout grey pony carrying an armour-clad knight galloped into the frame. Sir Cadogan held his large sword aloft with a twig of mistletoe speared through the tip. "Greetings fair maidens…"

"Oh, Cadogan…" said the sprightly girl in a sing-songy voice as she wielded the fireplace poker.

"Shoving off…shoving off," he called as he clicked his metal heels into the pony and rode out of the painting. Charity laughed. Her spirits had lifted after talking with the girls and she decided it was time to return to the party and steal her father away.

Charity wasn't as excited to return to her students as she usually was after the holiday break. With the introduction of Slytherins to Muggle Studies, a definite anti-Muggle sentiment had found its way into Charity's classroom. Many of the Slytherin students came from families who valued the maintenance of so-called pure blood status, or magical-only ancestry; therefore; many of the Slytherin families did not welcome Muggle-borns, much less Muggles, into the wizarding world.

A few Slytherins here and there were very nice kids, but for the most part, they tended to be an arrogant, mean-spirited lot. Once Charity actually caught a few Slytherins trying to slip poisonous belledonna leaves in with Bnickel's food! As Charity had learned at her first Sorting ceremony, the character trait most valued in the Slytherin house was ambition. Ambition often meant seeking power, and in Charity's studies she'd found that seeking power for power's sake rarely led to anything good. Unfortunately, if Charity wanted to increase the exposure of Muggle Studies, she was going to have to deal with the insolent behavior of the Slytherin students, Malcolm Baddock in particular.

It was no coincidence that Snape was head of Slytherin house. Although Charity understood the natural disposition of these students, she couldn't help but think that someone was egging them on. She was convinced that the darker side of Snape, which had drawn him to Voldemort in the first place, was reawakening. She never for a moment actually believed that he would ever re-join the Death Eaters, but reckoned that his internal struggle with these dark tendencies had led to his increasingly foul temper. Charity's natural inclination was to help him, but she'd been rebuffed enough times to know that any such attempt would not be worth the effort. Instead she told herself that Snape's state of mental well-being was none of her concern. On the other hand, if his unrest was causing him to pit his students against her, then she had every right to be concerned, and so she kept a sharp eye out for evidence that Snape was behind the disruptive behavior.

Charity was horrified during her third year class's study of the Holocaust when two Slytherins, Malcolm Baddock and Graham Pritchard, showed up bearing Swastikas on their arms. At first she didn't notice because their robes covered it up, but half way through class they casually let their robes fall to the side, exposing the foul symbol.

She told them tersely, "Cover your arms." With a sneer and a superior look around the classroom, they did. At the end of class, she held them back and marched them directly to Snape's Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Snape had been sitting at his desk writing, but he stood up when the small group entered without knocking. It was Charity's first time visiting his new upstairs classroom, and as she angrily approached him, she was distracted by the sight of hideous posters on the walls. The pictures displayed witches and wizards in various stages of pain and dismemberment.

"Oh, Severus," she murmured with disgust. Did he enjoy looking at these images? "Way to cheer up the place."

"The Dark Arts is not a cheery subject," he replied.

"Well then, the two of you make the perfect couple, don't you?" Charity said with an edge to her voice. Snape glared hotly at her and she at him. Baddock and Pritchard wore self-satisfied grins as they closely watched Snape, clearly eager for him to put their Muggle Studies teacher in her place.

Snape's eyes flicked from Charity's toward the students and then back again. "Good one, Professor Burbage, but I'm assuming pithy conversation isn't the reason you came to visit?" he said in measured tones.

Charity swiftly pulled the boys' robes aside, exposing the symbol and asked, "Do you know what this is?"

Snape looked impassively at the symbols and said, "Yes."

"Well, do you think it's appropriate for these boys to be wearing them to MY CLASS or anywhere else for that matter? Particularly when we are studying the horrors that this very symbol stands for?" she said, her voice shaking.

"Heh," let out one of the boys along with his sneer, as if he expected Snape to be proud of him.

Snape silenced the boy with a cold glare and said to Charity, "Of course it is not appropriate."

"Well, they will both be having detention with ME this evening but I thought as head of house you may want to ensure that this type of thing NEVER happens again!" Charity threw the boys' robes down to cover the symbols and stormed out of the classroom, stopping and turning at the door to say, "Oh, and FIFTY points from Slytherin!" Snape didn't argue with her.

Charity took a few angry steps down the hall before deciding against leaving entirely just yet. She quietly walked back toward the classroom and stood just outside the doorway so that Snape and the boys couldn't see her. She waited in silence, ready to pounce the second she caught Snape encouraging the students against her.

She heard ripping fabric as Snape said, "These are never to be worn or seen in this school again, do you understand?"

"Yeah, but –" came Baddock's insolent voice.

"But what? I don't know what you were thinking," berated Snape.

"Well, they just seemed cool, you know like the Dark Mark," explained a voice Charity recognized as Pritchard's.

Snape sighed deeply and said evenly, "I assure you, there is nothing cool about either."

"Yeah, well, her class is so stupid and useless and we thought for once we could make it a little interesting."

"You may not agree with Professor Burbage's position on Muggles," Snape said firmly to the students, "but she is an excellent teacher and a fine person. As a professor here at Hogwarts, she deserves every bit the same amount of respect that you give me." Charity's heart leapt at this unexpected praise.

"You would do well to stop taking orders from Misters Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle and start taking them from actual authorities, such as myself and your other professors," Snape said and then dismissed them. Charity backed into a nearby recess in the wall as the two boys walked past grumbling. When they were a safe distance away and it appeared that Snape was not to emerge, she walked back to her room filled with a new hope. Later that night Malcolm and Graham learned a little something about humility when they scoured Bnickel's cage while the master of the cage watched over them, resting snuggly on Charity's lap.

Charity's new hope was dashed, but not entirely extinguished, the very next morning when she approached Snape in the staff room to thank him for taking care of the matter. He'd simply responded, "I was only doing my job," and stalked off. The words were cold, but his voice hadn't been. Add to that the fact that he'd come round to the teacher's lounge for the first time in months, and Charity wondered if he was beginning to soften. The problem was that she was tired of trying to read between Snape's vindictive lines. If he wanted to mend their relationship, he was going to have to do better than 'I was only doing my job.'