Two: Expectation

With a violently trembling right hand, Sara lifted her equally shaking arm and curled her fingers into a ball in order to knock. But she hesitated to actually do so until her breath had regulated slightly and her still overly-enthusiastic heart rate had reduced itself to erratic thuds.

Finally summoning up her courage and facing her long-held fear head on, she knocked, softly at first, then almost immediately afterwards more boldly. It was no good being afraid, she told herself; she was here on her first day of employment at Hogwarts, not as a student any more but a fully-fledged adult member of staff. Alright so she hadn't seen Professor Snape for six whole years, but he was no longer her teacher and she no longer his student. Would he even remember her? After all, hundreds of students had passed through his hands over the years and, although most of them not talented in Potions, some were - not just she - and many had gained good grades. She knew that he had never really singled her out nor looked at her in any special way. She had told herself these facts countless times, but it seemed she had great difficulty in accepting them.

All day, on this her first day back, Sara had waited with bated breath for a glimpse of him, furtively glancing around for the merest hint of all-encompassing black, the swish of a billowing cloak or the apparent sudden temperature drop as his icy stare announced his arrival, but to no avail.

And then opportunity had presented itself in the shape of needing to take some papers to him. Perhaps her enthusiastic volunteering to do the deed had surprised her superior, School Secretary Madam Villers, who had voiced that the task needed doing. But, if so, Madam Villers had shown no sign of it and appeared only too happy to delegate the task to Sara.

Of course Sara, for her part, had known that Professor Snape was still teaching at Hogwarts when she had applied for the job. She had known that he was still in his same position as Potions master. After all, there would have been little other incentive for wanting such a post without this prior knowledge.

She had waited years for such an opportunity. And, although not officially qualified as a Secretary, running her own business for the previous three years and having a natural predisposition to administration put her onto the short-list at the interview. As did the rapport she still seemed to have with her old Head of House, Professor Flitwick, who did not seem able to speak highly enough of her. Dumbledore's curiosity as to why she should want to return to such a meagre position within the school after running her own successful apothecary seemed to be quelled by Sara's convincing lies. She had told him that she 'simply wanted a change' and that 'business wasn't currently doing too well.' She certainly could not have blurted out the truth - that for years she had carried a torch for her former Potions master and simply wanted an excuse to be near him again!

Now, in the few seconds space following her knock on the door, and as she waited anxiously for his response, her mind quickly flashed through the thoughts that kept occurring ever since she found out that she had secured the job. Would he have changed much in six years? She knew he was 13 years her senior, so with her now being 24, that made him 37 - hardly old! In fact she often forgot that he was a newly qualified teacher of just 24 himself when he had first started at Hogwarts, during her first year there, taking over from a previous Potions professor whose name had been so meaningless to her that she could not even remember it now.

By the time her 'crush' had been in full swing, at the ages of 16 to 18, Snape himself had only just turned 30! Yet he had always seemed so much more mature, so confident and alluring, while that deeply dark, brooding side exuded the mysterious sexiness, with the merest hint of an underlying passion and even vulnerability and tenderness, that so intrigued her.

One part of the equation that she had never been able to come to terms with of course was the fact that she knew nothing of his actual life outside of Hogwarts. Perhaps he had a lover? She knew he was unmarried for she had heard it discussed many times. But that, of course, wouldn't have excluded other more permanent, or even temporary, arrangements. Then there were the rumours that he was or had been a Death Eater and that he was a spy of some sorts for Dumbledore. Was that still the case? He-who-shall-not-be-named was getter stronger again, she knew, ever since that Harry Potter had come to Hogwarts.

So what secrets did this great man of mystery still hold? she pondered. She could not and would not think ill of him. She had looked into those deep, dark eyes too many times to realise that they were merely the outer shutters into an even deeper and more secretive soul. But - and this was her biggest and worst fear of all - how would she, Sara Elise Faraday, actually feel when she finally saw him again?

This last flash of questioning did not have long to be answered as the familiar deep, resounding voice penetrated through the thickness of the door and into her very being.

The beautifully enunciated 'Come in!' (Sara was expecting him to say 'enter' in colder tones) hit her ears with a resounding jolt, springing her into pushing the door wide open.

Suddenly the last six years of her life seemed to skitter away like soft smoke on the breeze, and she was once again that schoolgirl of 16, trembling yet eager and fighting to quell the tide of anxiety rising up from the pit of her stomach.

Then she was in the room and there he was. Stiff, up-rightly rigid in the chair behind his desk, regal-looking as ever, and just as she remembered him. Apart from possibly a few more deep lines etched across his already furrowed brow, Sara could see little change, and for a few seconds their eyes met and they held each other's gaze with a kind of dignified yet expectant silence.

'Miss Faraday?' he said at last, and at the sound of her name on his lips after all this time, Sara blushed, wholeheartedly reinstating in her the feeling that she really was still the schoolgirl sent on an errand from the office.

'G-good afternoon, sir,' she stammered. 'I've brought some papers for you. Madam Villers said you needed them today.'

'Indeed,' he replied, still not taking his eyes off her, which only further added to her heat and the feeling of a terrible constrictive tightness around her throat and upper abdomen.

'Shall I put them here?' she questioned, not sure if her voice had come out steady or not, as she placed the papers in a neat pile on the near side of his solid, rather grandiose, desk.

'That's fine, that's fine,' he said confidently.

'Thank you,' he added politely, this time casting his gaze down to the newly placed paper stack to one side of him.

At a loss as to what to say and feeling as if her arid throat could no longer rise to the task of creating speech nor her lips form a coherent sentence any way, Sara backed slightly from the desk, head bowed as if in submission, while the new silence was broken with the Professor's assertive words again.

'How are you?'

To her own amazement, she stammered that she was well, whilst managing to avert her gaze from those dark, fathomless eyes of his. Instead, she turned her attention to the neatly manicured fingers of her hands, both of which, she was embarrassed to notice, had become tightly entwined around each other in the absence of the papers she had previously been carrying.

From the tone of his voice, Sara knew that he was smiling, a kind of half-amused, half-sympathetic smile that she guessed to some would almost pass as a smirk.

'The Headmaster tells me you've been running your own apothecary in recent times. Is that correct?' he asked, the words sounding soft and almost lyrical in the way he gently expressed them.

'Y-y-yes, sir. It is true,' Sara replied, perhaps a little too quickly.

This time she looked up to see the smile upon his face deepen and his eyes sparkle - almost twinkle - as he said, 'There's really no need to call me 'sir' any more, Sara. You're no longer my student. We're colleagues now. No need for such formalities!'

'It's been a long time since I last saw you,' he went on, 'You've changed somewhat. Grown up of course.'

'Y-yes, s...I mean,' she flummoxed, once more desperately averting her gaze.

'I always knew you'd do well,' he added benevolently, almost as if trying to help her cover her own distress. She was grateful.

'As you can see,' he continued, 'nothing much changes around here, more's the pity!'

She smiled at this and raised her eyes to his, but this time, he looked away, and she somehow thought that she caught a fleeting glimpse of sadness in them and perhaps something else that she couldn't quite fathom. But, whatever it was or wasn't, she took this as her cue to leave and slowly began to turn towards the door.

'Well,' she said, 'I'll no doubt see you around?' She managed to omit the title 'sir' from the statement at the last second, just before her lips automatically formed the word on her tongue.

'You can count on that' was his reply, and once again, she sensed that his words were tinged with amusement.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him return to marking the same student essays on his desk that her earlier intrusion had clearly interrupted.

Once on the other side of the door, Sara let out a huge sigh and cursed herself for having been so flustered and tongue-tied in his office. Then again, she countered, what had she really expected? The important thing was that she had got through it, she told herself. The long out of reach barrier had been penetrated at last - surely it could only get easier from now on?