Severus failed to take Dahlia into account: he was accostomed to Petunia writing back to him promptly in the Protean journal the same evening he wrote to her. Not anymore. Eight o'clock in the evening of September 1st:It appears young Chiara spent all summer brewing potions at home. She brought a box of samples for me to grade. -S

Eight o'clock in the evening of September 2nd found Severus in the owlery posting the Honeydukes chocolates for Petunia's birthday, still no response.

Eight o'clock in the evening of September 3rd he finally found her scribbled reply:Thanks for the chocolates, Sev! Delicious as always. It's been hectic here. It's only two days, and I'm already missing my babysitter. Those boys have so much energy. I don't think I realized how much help you really were this summer. I'll have more time to write next week when they're off to school too. Until then, please write to tell me all the new gossip! How did Chiara do with her potions? Any surprises in the Sorting this year? How is Ms. Jones liking her Head Girl role? Any apalling potions escapades yet? -P

Severus smiled and penned his answers. Chiara's potions were quite good. Simple brews, but well-done. I told her to write home that the rest of the healing potions, cleaning solutions, and fertilizer she left there should be perfectly safe for home use. She told me after her first class with me yesterday she worked with her mother on them and had to discard the first few batches they tried until they realized the cauldron cleaner they were using was expired. It's a common mistake with infrequent home brewers.

The Sorting went well this time. I was quite pleased. Gwenog's transition to Head Girl has been seamless. She gets on well with all the prefects from the other houses, which can be the biggest hurdle for Slytherins. Or Gryffindors for that matter. I had a meeting with her this evening. She was well-prepared with a prioritized agenda: her goals for the year are to sign on with a professional quidditch team and use her position to cement the legacy she started last year with the second year electives QA and the dueling club rather than start a lot of new projects that might not last beyond her term. Her only new item was to make castle tours for the first years mandatory for all four Houses. I confess I did not realize they were not already. Apparently only Slytherin and Hufflepuff conduct these routinely, Slytherin because we are sensible, Hufflepuff because they are sensitive. The Gryffindors seem to assume showing the younger students around would take away some thrill of exploration, while the Ravenclaws seem to think their students should be smart enough to figure it out themselves. At least, that was the only explanation the respective prefects could come up with as to why their Houses were lacking. Certainly explains why it's always the Gryffindor or Ravenclaw students who tend to be late in the first week. I had thought them to be self-obsessed (or otherwise obsessive) layabouts by nature, but it's good to know they are merely misinformed and averse to asking advice of authority figures. The oversight only came up because Ms. Jones suggested combining the castle tours for all the first years. She and I agreed to inquire as to the official and unofficial orientation activities on both the prefect and faculty ends, with hopes of improving the experience across the board. Ms. Jones also had some suggestions for how to continue and adapt the second annual "Heir of Slytherin" competition I told you about. We decided as the reining Heir, it would be unfair to allow her to run again, but she will be an on-the-ground arbiter and mentor and directly advise me when it comes to selecting her successor. It should help with the House reforms.

Nothing too terrible in potions classes so far, but I'm sure there will be a story or two by the end of the week. There always is.

As for gossip, two items of interest for you. Firstly, the new Defense Professor seems competent for a change. He debated whether or not to tell Petunia Professor Porskoff was already in the habit of flirting with him every meal they shared and ultimately decided against it. She's also quite friendly. It's a nice change after the past few eccentrics to take the post. I much prefer her to the new Muggle Studies professor Albus hired after David announced his retirement. It's a shame Professor Porskoff is unlikely to stick around for more than a year, while Professor Quirrell will likely be an inane fixture for decades - Muggle Studies is not an academic career that leads anywhere else besides secondary education.

Secondly, we have a mystery on our hands. One of the first year Hufflepuffs was magically barred from entering her dormitory. It's the strangest thing - she physically cannot walk down the corridor to her dorm. It's not a problem with entering the common room or any other permitted area we've checked so far. We still haven't figured out why. Albus is sifting through the wards to see if he can figure it out. It's a good thing it happened in Hufflepuff - Melody Perkins, the seventh year Hufflepuff prefect, apparently arranged a House slumber party in their common room as soon as the issue arose. Pomona says all the first and second years are still camping out in an enormous pillow fort and plan to continue until the girl's sleeping arrangement is sorted out. I don't think any other House would have been so supportive. -S

He stewed for a minute before clenching his jaw and writing out what he had meant to say two days previously, if she had only written back at that time so that he could work it into conversation more naturally.Could you apologize to Vernon for me? I shouldn't have been holding a grudge the past few weeks. Now that I'm back at work and missing you all, I realize it was foolish. -S

He closed the journal and went to bed.

Is the grudge all you're apologizing for? -V

Severus sneered when he saw the comment in the morning. That was all Vernon deigned write two days later? He wasn't the only one in the wrong here! At the moment. -S

He flounced off to breakfast and glowered into his morning coffee.

"What, is rebellion on ship, Professor Snape?"

He jerked and glanced up at Professor Porskoff in surprise. "Beg pardon?"

She waved a hand airily as she took her now-customary seat next to him. "Russian saying. You look... what is word? Not-happy, but not grief or not anger."

"Upset?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. I consult dictionary later. So. 'S'up?' As kids say." She wiggled her eyebrows at him over the rim of her own teacup.

"Nothing important. How are you finding Hogwarts?"

"Simple. I live here now. Find as soon as I wake up." It took a beat, and then he scowled at her. She laughed. "Ah! Do not curse me, Professor Snape! I know your meaning. I like castle very well. Very comfortable. And look! I spoke to elves in kitchen last night, gave them Baba's recipi for blini.You must try. Like this." She snatched up a thin crepe from a nearby plate, slathered it in sour cream, rolled it up, and quickly devoured it with an expression of pure relish.

Severus rarely ate crepes, and never served in such a way. Curious, he copied her. The texture was quite good, and he decided he did like the simple flavor profile.

"Can also serve with honey, or jam, or nuts, or chocolate, or any number of fillings, but this is tradition. In summer, Baba makes huge batch for whole family..."

He listened to her descriptions of her family and their traditions for awhile, content with the distraction. He had never traveled outside the country - first too poor, then tied down by the demands of a deranged warlord, and currently barred from foreign travel as part of the plea bargain that kept him out of Azkaban. (A rather unfair deal considering richer Death Eaters like Lucius Malfoy were at complete liberty). When she paused to drink some more of her tea, he mentioned casually, "You should consider leading a seminar sometime this year for the students to learn more about life in another culture, Professor Porskoff. It is interesting for those of us who never or rarely leave the Isles."

She beamed at him. "I speak with Headmaster. And you must call me Anastasia. May I call you Severus?"

Before he could answer, Minerva swooped up behind him, jostling his chair as she slapped a hand on Pomona's shoulder. "Pomona, I had a thought this morning. Your first year girl, Huckabee. Is it only her dorm she can't enter?"

Severus and Anastasia leaned over curiously. The dormitory ward mystery had continued to defy all attempts to unravel it so far.

Pomona dabbed her lips with a napkin. "Mm. It's the whole hall, actually. Poor thing can't get past the common room! She's even got a hall pass to use at night if she needs the loo. Fortunately, the Fat Friar rounded up a few of the friendlier ghosts to be available to escort her to and from the Prefect's bathroom, as it's the only one outside the dorms with a full bath, but..."

"Yes, yes, yes," Minerva cut her off impatiently. "Have we tried getting her into the boys' dorm?"

The others cocked their heads at her. Something niggled in the back of Severus' mind, but before he could trace the thought, Minerva resumed speaking.

"I see not. But don't you see? This whole thing hasn't made sense. All the protective wards are on the entrances to the common rooms, not to the individual dormitories. Except for the ones on the girls' halls."

"What ward on girls' hall?" Anastasia asked.

"Why, to keep out the boys, of course," Minerva explained impatiently. "It's an old rule. Dates back to the Founders, actually, when poor Helena Ravenclaw needed a respite from her more boorish admirerers."

"...Sure. But how can that ward even malfunction?" Pomona asked.

Minerva offered a thin, triumphant smile. She pulled out a book and slammed it onto the table between Severus and Pomona. Severus winced as he recognized the muggle tome - Sex Education: Rationale and Reaction. It was the book Petunia had found for him last year, which he had subsequently left in Minerva's office without actually reading more than a few painful exerpts. The book opened, its pages riffling automatically to a section Minerva had bookmarked. And annotated. And highlighted. Dear Merlin, did she do that to the whole thing? "It's happened before, actually. The last incident I found when I dug through the archives this morning was back in seventeen sixty-four, with a so-called 'hermaphrodite' in Ravenclaw requiring special accomodations because the same ward wouldn't let them pass. The muggles call it either 'transgenderism' or 'intersexuality' now, depending on the specifics."

Pomona and Anastasia both leaned in towards the book curiously. Severus was so grateful for the permanent muffling charms placed on the staff table to protect their conversations from the students' ears. He leaned backwards and flicked a quick gust of air towards Albus to catch his attention. The old man's beard blew up to tangle in his forkful of omelet. Severus caught the wizard's eye when he looked up in surprise. Sometimes, when you needed to telepathically communicate the urgent need for yet another morning staff meeting, the headmaster's near-constant, casual Legilimency was actually convenient.

.

There were several important outcomes of the ensuing meeting:

1) Minerva McGonnagall finally discovered who had anonymously gifted her a muggle book on sex education - on her wedding anniversary, which Severus had not remembered at the time. Minerva had married Elphinstone Urquart during Severus' first year of teaching at Hogwarts. He had been depressed, absorbed in grief, still fighting the war, unpleasant, unsociable, and thus not invited to the ceremony. Anyway, Minerva had taken the book as a joke from her husband Elphinstone, until she brought it home to their Hogsmeade cottage. Severus might never live down the embarrassment, despite his stiff defense that he was tired with bearing the entire burden of educating the students regarding sexually transmitted infections and also consent, merely because his subject covered both healing and love potions. He might never be able to walk the streets of Hogsmeade again. He wouldn't be able to meet Urquart's eye after Minerva inevitably told him. Needless to say, everyone thought it was hilarious. Filius had to employ a Silencio on his own laughter in order for the meeting to continue.

2) Eva Huckabee would be getting a new room. Indeed, Albus and the Heads of Houses would be modifying the layouts of all four House dorms to cover this kind of situation in the future. It was decided to extend all four girls' dorm wings in order to add an eigth, two-three person room on the hall but outside the ward and with a separate password, as well as move one of the lavatories to the common room level. Albus speculated the only reason no previous headmaster or headmistress had done something similar the handful of times it had come up over the centuries was because indoor plumbing hadn't existed at the time to make the issue quite so obvious. Young Eva would also be meeting with Poppy and Pomona privately to go over what had been discovered. Obviously the child must have some idea or the ward would not have activated, but Eva had enrolled as a young witch, not wizard. Clearly, either the child or their parents or both preferred the matter to stay private at present.

3) Poppy agreed to lead much-needed Sex and Relationship Education classes, starting in November once she'd had a chance to review Minerva's book. Just six meetings per year for each class, with the latter years divided by House and sex. She would bring a proposed year-by-year curriculum to the October staff meeting for the House Heads to review. Something Severus was so looking forward to.

Author's note: I've been to a lot of schools and also jobs at big, complex buildings. There is always a tour. Maybe it was just skipped in canon, but it really seemed like the kids were shown how to get to their dorms from the great hall and given a schedule the next morning, and that was that. Fortunately in this universe, Gwenog is Head Girl, so when Harry gets to Hogwarts, he will get a proper tour no matter which House he is Sorted into.

Quick googling indicates rates of transgender identity somewhere around 1% in teens, so there's got to be some showing up at Hogwarts from time to time. It's canon that only the girls' dorms are warded against boys. I'm going with the ward recognizes the thought patterns of someone identifying as male to keep them out of the girls' dorm, rather than anatomy, because anatomy can be more complicated than you think and I don't want to imagine let alone write about a spell that includes some kind of arbitrary measurement clause for the case of intersex students with nonbinary anatomy... Even considering I've made the ward medieval, it's still more valid for it to be based on gender identity than anything else. Medieval scholars got a lot of things very wrong about anatomy, but they actually did have a conception of intersex individuals (even if their conception of how that might happen was hilariously wrong - see the seven womb hypothesis of PseudoAlbertus Magnus). Indeed, the word "hermaphrodite" dates back to Greek mythology, of which HP wizards were clearly well acquainted. Now, since the ward is only on girls' dorms and not boys', it won't affect transgender girls nor non-binary students. Obviously the ward working in this way to bar a transgender boy is not canon because JKR doesn't believe transgender people exist despite scientific evidence to the contrary, but that is neither here nor there.

Most importantly, our dear Snape has to think about so many embarrassing topics he's been carefully ignoring except when absolutely necessary for the past ten years... bless him.

Thanks for the reviews! I'll continue with sporadic updates, hopefully a bit more regularly again though I make no promises.