Chapter 4 - The Notice

Instructing the Professor

Chapter 4 – The Notice

As the various students awoke on the first day of lessons, they were all astounded to find a memorandum on their common room notice boards. The earliest Gryffindor risers, however, were unexcited at the news. These early risers were an incongruous trio: a Quidditch star, a quiet sickly looking intellectual and a mischievously handsome lad. These three young men sat up in their common room staring at the notice, which read –

Attention all students: Professor Herigone Grenarm wishes to inform you that your potions lessons will henceforth be held in the Dungeons. She will be keeping to Professor Flamel's consultation hours for seventh year students.

The dark-haired young man in glasses tousled his hair slightly and flopped into an armchair. The rakishly handsome one with a bored look did the same, watching his quiet prefect friend still examining the notice. "Where's Peter?" asked the second fellow with a slight yawn to no one in particular.

His dark haired companion with the faux windswept hair gestured to both his friends with a wicked grin, his eyes brightening at the prospect of mischief. "Shall we wake him?" he asked, laughing and rubbing his hands in anticipation.

The shy unassuming prefect replied with a sigh, "Let him sleep. Unless you want Lily to nag at you again."

His two friends laughed and proceeded to move to the boys' dormitory. The prefect glared at them disapprovingly. "You three won't be getting much rest next week when the moon..."

The bespectacled young man pouted somewhat. "You have a way of badgering us, Remus," he said with some contrition.

"What!" cried the rakishly handsome lad in thwarted disbelief, "We aren't waking Peter then?"

"Don't be disappointed," chuckled the shy prefect named Remus. "Maybe this time, I'll bite one of you before I transform!"

* * *

An hour later, the Slytherin common room bore witness to an almost similar scene. A pale aristocratic young man with shoulder length hair that was equally pale sat forward in his chair and motioned his companion to do the same. He moved a rook on the chessboard to take his opponent's knight. His companion chose to remain shrouded in the shadows and tapped a foot impatiently. The pale blond tossed his head and stretched his hand back to feel his hair. Pleased that it remained in its place, he returned to his chess game. His companion coughed rudely at his vanity. It was apparent that he was a lad who prided himself on everything, his looks, his eighteenth century styled hair and his epicurean knowledge. He carelessly moved his knight and watched his friend's pawn smash it into submission.

"Have you read the notice?" asked the silky voice from the shadows.

"Oh, that!" the blonde aristocrat laughed, "She may be a Slytherin, seeing how she houses herself in Old Salazar's quarters. It sounds like your kind of thing, doesn't it?"

Some young Slytherin girls passed him and batted their eyes coquettishly at him. He smiled in return with a slight nod.

"She's too young to be teaching at twenty-one," said the young man from the shadows as he finally leaned forward. He had a stringy pallid look about him, his hooked nose setting off his face with distinction as he made his move on the chessboard. "Do you think she's qualified?" he continued, flicking aside a lock of his greasy looking hair aside with great force. "Check."

The blonde laughed heartily. "Is that all you care about? Whether she's a good teacher? I thought she quite turned your head."

"I am concerned about my education, as you should be, Malfoy – if we are to serve the Dark Lord effectively, we must have something to offer him other than blind loyalty," snarled the dark haired student as he moved his bishop.

"I cannot understand you," said his friend with an ugly twisted grin. "You and your preoccupation with books and knowledge. What about wealth? What about the possession of things? What about acquisition?"

The student with the hooked nose narrowed his eyes. "Lucius, Lucius," he murmured in a dangerous purr, suppressing the urge to curl his lips in scorn. "The truly beautiful things are those which are nebulous. The greatest things are often elusive. Those things that we cannot see, such as the beyond, knowledge and power are the most tantalising. We can never possess them totally yet they seduce us precisely because we cannot tame them; we don't know what they are like. You've always received what you wanted; you don't know what it's like to want something with an expectation that you cannot ever possess it. This thing, that you want but cannot have, is infinitely more beautiful than anything tangible." He moved his black queen and smirked. "Checkmate."

"Trying to be profound? So serious," mocked the wizard named Lucius Malfoy as he knocked the pieces off the chessboard. "You should go into academia if that romantic pursuit of the intangible and unattainable is what you want. No wonder you always eye up the wrong women – McGonagall and Lillian Evans." Ignoring his dark haired companion's calculative glare and absentminded tracing of the lips, he added, "And now the new Potions Mistress? Why, she's not even beautiful! French, my arse! She's coarse looking and common; nothing like my fine boned Narcissa."

A stout looking classmate swaggered up to them with the reminder that it was time for breakfast.

"In that case, we should get down to the Great Hall soon," said the dark-haired student with the prominent hooked nose. "Before we are accused of other heinous deeds."

"Nott," answered Lucius, elegantly rising from his chair and gesturing for his companion to do likewise. "We shall join you shortly, as soon as he gets over his latest love of the year."

Tired of his friend's wild insinuations, the pallid student rose to his full height and swept out of his common room without a backward look at his laughing friend.

* * *

The seventh year Potions students filed into the classroom and seated themselves as they chose, waiting for their teacher to arrive. The original silence that had fallen over them at the expectation of her entrance soon gave way to a sea of various conversations. The Gryffindors on the right exchanged their speculations on the new teacher - so eager were they to know what she was like. The Slytherins at the opposite end of the room, on the other hand, cast sideways glances at the Gryffindors in between their latest plots and intrigues.

"What do you think Snivellus is doing?" sneered the rakishly handsome Gryffindor as he pointed to the dark haired Slytherin with the hooked nose.

"Leave him be," advised Remus when he saw that the object of his friend's conjecture was engrossed in reading a book. "He's..." Before he could continue, a buzzing rapidly moving thing flew past his eyes. "James!" he exclaimed with a sigh. "I thought you promised Lily to be rid of it!"

The bespectacled student merely laughed as a thin, small fellow at his elbow chortled sycophantically, clapping his hands.

"Sirius! Help me!" pleaded Remus, his voice thick with exasperation.

The rakish Gryffindor only threw up his hands and whistled with feigned innocence as he turned away. Shaking his head at his friends' behaviour, the shy prefect's eyes caught the diminutive panderer staring intently at the greasy haired Slytherin and wringing his hands in nervous uncertainty.

"Peter, are you all right? You've gone pale, do you want a bit of chocolate?" he asked in a suspicious voice missed by the skinny little toady.

"Ha! Look at that!" cried Sirius with malicious glee. Remus sharply turned his head in the direction of his friend's gaze. He had sensed something amiss, he could smell it in the air. The joys of being a werewolf, he thought sardonically. The proud pale blonde Slytherin wizard chased away the buzzing golden article away from his face with a bored expression; the object then flew beside him to the reading hooked nose student. The pallid fellow chose to ignore the annoying buzzing entity as James and Sirius egged it on.

"Seeing how long you can stand it, Snivellus?" jeered Sirius amidst much laughter.

"How pathetically puerile," hissed the antagonised fellow, turning paler with rage as he shut his book dramatically. "Rather it than you and Potter," he declared quietly, his lips curling in disdain at the support the Gryffindor Quartet amassed. He glared meaningfully at Peter and scowled at Remus when Sirius and James strutted to the centre aisle of the classroom.

Lucius blocked them with a tart remark that made nearly everyone gasp. The pallid teenager flew to his friend's side and drew his wand when he saw James and Sirius pointing their wands at him. At that exact moment, when the students thought things could not get any worse, the Potions Mistress stormed in, her long grey robe billowing behind her. She loped forward, drew her robe closer to her long grey dress and disarmed the four students.

"What are you trying to do?" she questioned impatiently in a heavy French accent. "There will be no foolish wand waving in my class!"

"Professor Grenarm," interjected Remus, hoping to defuse the situation.

"Monsieur Lupin, this is not your concern and my name is pronounced Grey-narh, ne pas Gree-nam," she said coldly, leaning on the old clerk's desk.

Sirius sniggered and muttered, "Loo-pahn? It's Lupin! What kind of a name is Herigone Grenarm?"

The hooked nosed Slytherin stared at him in shock while the Potions Mistress narrowed her eyes. She smiled slightly, as sly as a cat, that was about to pounce. "You English! Ne pas Harry-gone; c'est 'Er-ree-go-nee', like the priestess of Artemis."

She studied him leisurely with disinterest. "So, you must be the famous Monsieur Black." She lowered her voice into a soft hiss as she caught the flying buzzing object. She looked at it disdainfully and threw it sharply to the bespectacled student. "Monsieur Potter, return this to Madame Hooch before you hurt yourself with it."

The Slytherins burst into laughter at that remark.

"Silence!" she barked, her chocolate eyes glittering in anger. "Et vous, Monsieur Malfoy?" she continued, appraising him with utter contempt when she caught his smug look. "You should know better than to provoke idiots!"

The pallid teenager fixed his eyes at his Potions Mistress with astonishment – how did she know their names? She was a new teacher; she had yet to see the class register. Even if she had, she could not have already associated the names with the faces. Why had she ignored him in her acerbic remarks? Was she taking special care to overlook him? Just who was she?

The Potions Mistress cleared her throat as Lucius stood tall and the two guilty Gryffidors looked askance at each other. "Shall I break your wands, I wonder?" she taunted, playing with the said objects in her creamy white hands. "For flouting school rules, twenty points each from Gryffindor and Slytherin."

The students in the room gasped.

"Do that again and I will take more. You could have hurt yourselves and each other if you started hexing. What if you hit other students? Their safety has never a moment's thought in your thick skulls! If you want to kill each other, by all means, do so. Unless you want to scrub the blood from my floors, do it outside my classroom. Why are you still here? Return to your seats!"

All but the pallid dark haired student obeyed; he stood his ground meeting her hard gaze without flinching. "Je veux ma baguette, Professor Grenarm," he said flatly, ignoring Lucius's hiss of 'you stupid fool'.

She arched her brow to signifying her diversion. "Après la leçon, peut-être," she replied coolly, folding her arms in a commanding gesture and curling her lips contemptuously. "Et Sev...Monsieur Snape," she quietly called out upon dismissing him to his seat with a flick of her wrist. "Ten points from Slytherin for your," she paused, her chocolate eyes glittering strangely. "How shall we say...cheek."

The young Severus Snape returned to his seat completely stunned. Professor Herigone Grenarm had nearly addressed him by his given name! He was all astonishment! She had teased him! No female had ever teased him before! She was everything a witch should be, he noted as she snapped her fingers to conjure the day's potion procedure on the blackboard. She was nothing like his mother who was weak and helpless. Professor Grenarm was fiercely independent, stern but not in the dry manner of McGonagall. She was young and spirited; she possessed such grace and wit. She was powerful in mind and ability, he observed as she sharply flicked her wrist to banish Peter Pettigrew's failed potion. She did not require a wand to work. She had even done the unthinkable – she had scolded Potter and Black! She was completely impartial and possessed such a coldly dispassionate look that whenever Severus looked at her eyes, his heart missed a beat. Oh, if he were only privy to the machinations of her mind. She clearly knew what she was about, she was familiar with her material and was impossibly exacting in her lesson. To his immense joy, at the end of the class, she had detained him when she returned his wand. She had asked to see him two days hence to discuss his final year potions project. He noticed that she did not seek to revile him, neither was she repulsed. Instead, she had been almost disinterested in his appearance. She was only concerned with his work. "Such professionalism!" he muttered as he left for his next lesson, "What an extraordinary witch!"

Footnotes:

"Ne pas" is loosely translated as "not".

"Et vous, Monsieur Malfoy" means "And you, Mr Malfoy".

"Je veux ma baguette" means "I want my wand." As you can see, Severus is as insolent as ever.

"Après la leçon, peut-être" means "After the lesson, perhaps."

Having received several notes on the "baguette" reference, let me clarify myself.

According to the Wordsworth French-English & English-French Reference Dictionary, "bâton" (nm) means staff, stick or conductor's baton.

"Baguette" (nf) means (1) rod or wand, or (2) a long stick of bread. If you wish to stress that the wand is magical then it is "la/une baguette magique", which means "magic wand".

Having received notes on the Lily Evans reference, allow me to clarify something.

If you read the earlier section with the Marauders, you will realise that I used Lily. Lucius's reference to Lillian is deliberate, hence Severus's scowl/glare. Lucius doesn't care much for muggleborns, as we well know. Thus, his 'butchering' of the name. And yes, I took liberty with Lucius's age.

P/S I know the plot is a little slow moving; but we're now at the halfway mark.