Soulsavers

Severus

Who is this girl, and why is she taking all the NEWT classes when she’s not had to sit a single exam, Severus wondered, almost aloud, as did everyone else, if he had to guess. Last time he had checked, taking advanced classes was a privilege, not a right.

“You are all going to face some competition from this one!” Professor Slughorn boomed as he introduced her to the Slytherins, making a special effort to delay his return to the teacher’s table and start to stuff himself. “I am no Seer but I am sure you’ll scarcely be able to avoid her at your NEWTs!”

Severus asked himself whether she’d bribed him or shagged him.

Then, she sat next to him, which went to show she had no idea what she was doing.

He shifted away from her. "Hi, I'm Hermione," she started.

“Yeah.”

"I'm new,” she volunteered, and it was just dumb enough that he could not help but to react.

“I surmised as much, Hermione, but you're already getting on my nerves!" Her voice had a high, metallic quality to it, and even her name came out sounding like a lie.

Odd, that she didn't seem prepared for the contingency that he'd not be smitten with her at first sight. But if it meant his many enemies would pick on someone else for a change – and she seemed the type to attract at least some ire - then she was welcome. He thought back to the pub, and Rosier. Rosier had become much more palatable since he’d graduated, compared to how he used to be. Severus remembered Evan as the type of older boy who had very specific notions, including that the younger students had to "pay their dues,” whatever that had meant.

Now roaming free, he saw Severus as a Slytherin, not a lower year student, and it seemed to make a difference. Or maybe Evan in particular had no accomplishments to speak of except being born before Severus did, and out there in the grown-up world he realized this. It didn't matter. What mattered was that Hermione was new, she hadn’t paid her dues, and had already been singled out by Slughorn, so Severus wanted fuck all to do with her.

Hermione

Thanks, Horace, she thought bitterly when her Head of House introduced her. Who doesn’t like feeling threatened by a newcomer?

But Severus's young face startled her, and she forgot all about it. He looked… not so different from her teacher when she’d first seen him. What must it have been like for him to return here to teach, when he was barely older than he is right now? She imagined Percy Weasley trying to control a classroom. Percy had had trouble standing up even to his younger siblings. This Severus struck her as rude and jagged, just as she’d remembered. Although he usually concealed it better as an adult, or at least Hermione didn't mind it so much, coming from a teacher, as opposed to a peer. That, and she’d hoped for a kinder welcome from the man she had come here to save. Be worth it. Please be worth it. Or be an utter arse so that I can get over my regret, she prayed.

She was tired. Her original Sixth Year exams had been canceled (thanks, Severus), and now she’d  just sat nearly a dozen exams back to back, with teachers who weren't grading on a curve and didn’t necessarily want her there. She had no interest in trying to make friends or in socializing, and evidently the Slytherins, the older ones at least, had made a point of starting their classes with a hangover. They thought it was a unique, venerated and secret tradition, but Hermione knew the Gryffindors were just the same.

Before she could make her mind up about the party, she fell asleep.

Severus

Social acceptance was fickle - always had been, for Seveus. On his first night as a Slytherin he couldn't help but to feel betrayed – Lily and he had planned it all together, how they would both be Slytherins, and yet it seemed that she hadneeded no persuading at all to be sorted into Gryffindor. Lily had sworn it wasn’t her fault, that it was his fault, that he had lied to her and said it didn't matter if you were Muggle-born, but he wasn't so sure. He could have asked to be a Lion, as Lily had pointed out accusingly, but he said he only did what they had agreed on. Given everything that had happened, he had never come to regret not trying to be Sorted into the House of Wolves and Pigs.

On his first night, Rosier had tried to make Severus assume the role of errand boy for him, or some such, a suggestion that had infuriated and scared Severus. As he had yet to sit a single lesson, his accidental magic got away from him and he singed Rosier’s eyebrows off, making Lucius Malfoy roar with laughter. “We got ourselves a good one, here! You’d better listen to your prefect and leave him alone, or I’ll go tell Pomfrey exactly where your eyebrows went.”

Severus swelled with pride, and forgot about Lily.

If he had just let her go sooner, he might have remained reasonably well-liked, or at least tolerated, but his divided loyalties drove a wedge between him and his housemates, and James Potter took care of alienating everyone else.

Now, as his Seventh Year was starting, he went to the party feeling rather proud of himself again: to have recovered to the point of being invited was no small feat. The 6th and 7th year girls stood in a semi-circle and exchanged vicious gossip about Hermione, who apparently hadn’t been invited. "Do you think she’s a criminal? Do you think she did something awful in Australia and came here because everyone knew about it?” He'd been subject to this treatment himself and his chest tightened, but he squashed the sympathy: No one had bothered to help him, and for all he knew, these girls were right.

Glasses of fire whiskey hovered around the not-very-secret room they’d chosen, a disused boy's dormitory. Alcohol and spells didn't mix, and Severus did not envy whoever would have to clean up; he made a mental note not to get detention any time soon.

Before the dancing started, he stood next to Avery and Mulciber, who told him they had heard he'd met some very interesting people at the “Leaky” not long ago, and Regulus Black showed up to chime in that his cousins were“veritably inner-circle,” and that Severus might have a real chance. The warmth of the drink filled Severus’s belly and he said, “a chance is all I need. You'll see.”

“Show us now,” Mulciber said eagerly, though he tried to conceal it with a snigger, and Severus -not so drunk yet -  traced a line across Mulciber’s face with an invisible sword. It didn't puncture the skin, but Mulciber knew better than to move, lest he risk the invisible sword poking his eye out.

“If I’m going to drink, I think we should wait with the Dark stuff. It's not child's play anymore,” he said and lowered his wand.  

People laughed and made a show of agreeing with him. He had only one regret - he wished he had a girlfriend. The Slytherin girls were stuck up cows, who reminded him of Petunia Evans, but he still thought the night might have been perfect if he'd had someone to share it with.

“Oi, what’s a good potion for hangover?” Someone asked him, looking like he was aspiring to break a drinking record. A bezoar could have sobered him right up, and prevented the hangover, but would have prevented the desirable effect as well, so Severus said he didn’t know. By the time he’d be hung-over, the alcohol would be out of his system, and the best Severus would be able to do for this bloke (if he remembered me in the morning) would be to speed the process along. "Dihydrogen monoxide,” he said. "Very Dark stuff,” he supplemented when the bloke looked at him as though he had two heads. Then again, he just might be seeing double.

He made another mental note, to look into a potion that could prevent a hangover without preventing the drunkenness – but the mental note drowned as Severus decided to make the most of this party.

The First Day

Hermione

Hermione’s dorm mates, whose names she’d yet to memorise, climbed into their dorm at some ungodly hour, and Hermione told herself she would have made a much more conscientious prefect. One of them had to be the Prefect, after all. But these were not her true peers and she found herself feeling lax about the rules. What did she care if they lost Slytherin points?

She stayed out of their way and kept to herself. She showered early in the morning, self conscious about the only partially healed marks of the Second War (you better not talk about it, or call this one the “first” war). She had no time to waste on these women anyway.

The first lesson was herbology, with Potions scheduled for after lunch. Slughorn must have resented waking up early, she thought. Part of her had expected to find out he had joined his older students’ celebration.

The class was small, and took them to the Forbidden Forest. Professor Sprout told them this year they would learn about the trees most suitable for magical furniture, magical burning, even, intriguingly, magical paper, and about various types of fruit. Some of them struck her as decidedly Muggle, but Professor Sprout said wizards react to them differently. Whatever. Her childhood had involved no remarkable reactions to satsumas. Her mind wandered to the Whomping Willow and how it had attacked anyone who didn’t know the trick of it, and she wondered if that tree ever felt bothered by what it had been used to conceal. What’s wrong with you? Focus!

Professor Sprout showed them all how to check the sweetwater plum tree for infestations. Then, she picked some ripe fruit and advised the students to circulate them among their friends. Yes, their party was not the best kept secret of the wizarding world.

Finally, it was time for Potions.

Severus

Severus sat at the back of the classroom and arranged his equipment on his desk, reciting his checklist. Cauldron, textbook, his freshly-oiled wand, his newly calibrated scales, his silver dagger, and some parchment and quill. The Potions classroom was much more pleasant than the Herbology greenhouse, and though the forest air was cool and moist, he didn’t like the insects. He much preferred this setting, and the class was small. It wasn’t a popular NEWT, on the reasoning that Potions could be bought, ready-made. Unlike Severus, his classmates had more funds and less brains, so he did not blame them. It also meant fewer attempts to cheat off of him.

Except that the new girl showed up not long after he did and sat next to him without even asking. Her eyes dwelled on his book like some people back home looked at the cars that drove through Spinner’s End from the better parts to some part better yet. “You can have my sweetwater plum if you want," she said.

How did she know a magically hydrating fruit was just what he needed? But he refused. “I like working by myself,” he told her, and she seemed wounded.

"I'm sorry, it's only... I'm new and I'm not sure I'll keep up.”

Why did she always sound insincere? But he had no polite way to refuse and he suspected that an impolite refusal wouldn’t work, and that she would leave him alone when she saw he didn’t follow the textbook. It didn’t work either – she paid no mind to the textbook, and did exactly as he did. On the upside, when Professor Slughorn made the rounds, and praised his work and then hers, Lily turned white. She had always been second to none except Severus. He had to admit he liked seeing her mortified. The Professor even commended Severus on his spirit of collaboration, expounded on the importance of teamwork for some potions “and other things, no less important.” (Shut up, you smug twat, Severus thought).

Whatever it takes to get ahead, Severus figured.