Hermione awoke the next morning feeling very sore and slightly confused. The details from yesterday were still a bit fuzzy to her mind this early in the morning. Hermione got out of bed and began to brush her hair, then her teeth, she then decided on a nice pair of maroon robes and she emerged from her room ready for the day ahead of her.

"Good to see you were able to survive the night and still manage to be up at this ungodly hour," Snape grumbled from his doorway as he followed her to the door to their rooms,

"Well this hour is less ungodly than that one day I woke you," Hermione smirked at Snape, she was coming to quite enjoy teasing the man.

"True," he chuckled dryly holding the door open for her to take the lead down to breakfast.

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The first thing Hermione noticed as she entered the Great Hall was that there was a new man sitting up on the dais with the other teachers.

Hermione turned around and raised an eyebrow at Snape...Severus, her mind corrected her.

She thought on that as she made her way to her usual seat beside Minerva. They were on a first name basis now, she hadn't had a lot of time to digest this information and certainly hadn't, yet, used her new privilege.

Hermione felt very strange, she was elated by this new level of intimacy, but she also felt anxious this was only the beginning, they still had four years ahead of them before they could be more than few feet from one another. She was worried about how quickly they'd come to this point.

Her thoughts began to wonder on what could come next and if she even wanted to consider such a thing when the Headmistress stood up and cleared her throat.

"Excuse me students, Faculty, I'm sure you've noticed a new addition to our staff," Minerva began.

Hermione turned her head to look at the strange new man who was seated on the other side of Minerva. Hermione had to strain her head a bit to see all of him, she took in his strawberry blonde hair and nearly nonexistent eyebrows his eyes were an eerily light blue and his face was covered in a light dusting of freckles. She leaned a little farther back taking the front two legs of her chair off the ground and arching her neck Hermione was then able to see that this stranger was missing his right hand and that the nub left attached to his wrist was horribly scarred.

Hermione was positive that the wound had to have been caused by a dark curse.

"Now, if everyone will welcome Professor Mils," Minerva said with a slight flourish and the great hall erupted into applause. Hermione hadn't been paying attention and had been too busy studying Professor Mils to listen to anything Minerva had been saying and when the sudden sound of clapping hit her ears Hermione jumped and due to her precarious perch on two out of four legs, Hermione and her chair toppled to the ground.

The crash of Hermione hitting the stone floor wasn't so loud as to garner the attention of the students but all of the other teachers were staring at her and Snape was shaking in his seat.

Hermione glared up at him but he was too busy laughing to even notice.

Hermione quickly stood up righted her chair grabbed a muffin and stormed out the teachers entrance, Snape a few paces behind barely concealing his laughter.

Hermione stormed into the library and instantly began shelving books and ignoring Snape as much as one could when followed by a chortling ex-con.

Hermione continued on her day quietly ignoring Severus and going about her duties.

Dinner was fast approaching and Severus was buried deep into a book the smirk on his face the only remnant of his laughter from earlier.

"If you are quite finished laughing at me, shall we go to dinner?" Hermione asked.

"I don't think I'll ever be done laughing at what you did this morning, but for the moment my facial muscles have tired of that pose and shall stay in their most favored position," Severus then frowned dramatically.

Hermione couldn't stifle a giggle at his face.

"We better get moving if we intend to grab seats before everyone starts to eat and we make yet another scene," Severus drawled standing up and leading the way.

Hermione froze as she noticed that there were only two empty chairs left at the head table and they weren't beside each other.

Severus took the seat between Minerva and Hagrid.

Hermione was then forced to take a seat between Flitwick and the new professor Mils.

"Hello, I don't believe we've met yet," Professor Mils intoned from Hermione's left.

"No, I don't believe we have," Hermione said back nervously. "My name is Hermione Granger," Hermione reached out to shake the new professors hand.

"Fredrick Mils," He said back smiling, awkwardly. It was too late by the time Hermione realized her mistake.

Mils maneuvered his left hand, his only hand, to awkwardly take Hermione's right and shake it once before letting it go.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot about your hand..." Hermione stuttered out.

Mils smirked, "So that's what you were looking at when you fell off your chair this morning?"

Hermione's face fell further and she looked down. "I'm sorry about that I wasn't very awake and having a new face around is kind of a big deal around here and..."

Mils put his hand on top of the hand Hermione had resting on the table between them.

"It's fine," he said softly, "It is rather strange seeing a defense against the dark arts teacher with his dominant hand blown off by a nasty death eater," Mils's voice had started soft but snarled at the end making Hermione shift away from him slightly and withdraw her hand.

"We all have scars," she breathed back.