Chapter 4
Severus Snape had seen a lot of strange things in his 35 years of life, but muggleborn Hermione Granger getting restored into Slytherin had to take the cake. He couldn’t deny that the girl had some Slytherin tendencies–she had set him on fire at age 12, and brewed polyjuice potion at age 13, for god’s sake. That didn’t mean that he ever would have thought the Sorting Hat would have called her up to get resorted halfway through her academic career at Hogwarts.
But he supposed he shouldn’t’ve been as surprised as he was when the door at the end of the hall appeared.
Severus had a bad feeling about what its appearance meant.
Miss Granger slowly made her way toward the materializing door, head slightly tilted in obvious curiosity. Severus silently followed her, curious himself. He had only heard about this door in legends, and was anxious and delighted to discover it seemed as if this particular Hogwarts legend was real.
As they approached the almost fully-formed door, Miss Granger shakily reached her hand out to touch it. Part of Severus thought to stop her, but his gut told him that she wouldn’t be too terribly harmed, and he had learned to trust his gut years ago.
Miss Granger touched the door, then gasped and pulled her hand back. Severus came up beside her and gently took her hand, inspecting it. The door had pulled a blood sample from her.
An idea came to Severus. He Accio ed some bandages and a flannel, then went to work cleaning Miss Granger’s hand. He carefully wrapped the flannel up after cleaning the wound. After he wrapped her hand, he released her. Not once did she take her eyes off the door, eyebrows crinkled together in contemplation.
“Professor?”
Severus stuffed the flannel in his robe pocket. “Miss Granger?”
“What just happened?”
Severus hesitated. “I’m not entirely sure.”
She turned to look at him, confusion, concern, and curiosity evident on her face.
“But I promise I will endeavor to find out.”