Disclaimer: Harry Potter isn't mine.

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~Chapter 2, Pondering.~

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Severus sat in his office, looking through the file on the Solomon girl. He had to confess that he was rather disappointed that she'd been sorted into Gryffindor.

She had rattled him earlier in the corridor. Projecting her thoughts so loudly that he could hear it. He was naturally gifted at both legilimency and occulemency, but still. She must possess some talent in order to project that loudly.

I HATE HIM!

He recalled. He was fairly certain that she wasn't talking about him. Perhaps her father... or Malfoy?

With those words he'd also been overcome by great sorrow for a moment and the oddest sensation of breath on the back of his neck.

He chewed on the inside of his lip as he pictured her in his minds eye.

Slender, bordering dangerously on thin. Thick, dark, almost blood red hair that was braided into a rope that hung heavily over one shoulder. Clever green eyes. Pale skin with just one small freckle below her left eye. Her carefully composed features giving away nothing.

He had a sneaking suspicion that Lucius was hurting her. Beating her, probably.

But that sensation of breath on the back of his neck and that shiver of fear... he pushed the thought out of his mind. If Lucius was beating her, it was none of his business. Evidently the girl could withstand it, and he did not need to get tangled up in it. Lucius was nothing if not a man who lived to abuse and show his power over others. He was most likely training her to teach her to stay in line. Katja seemed to possess a strong will. It would be the natural response of Lucius to try to break it.

He gathered up the papers on his desk and shoved them back into the file. He'd learned that she had been a Wampus, not that it really meant anything to him. She was 15, parent deceased. Only child. Above average in all of her classes.

So with that he put the small red-head out of his mind and finished the preparations for his classes that would be coming all too soon.