Midsummer found Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry nearly deserted.

Minerva McGonagall walked quickly through the empty halls as she made her way to the dungeons, which managed to be as chill and damp in the heat of summer as they were in the dead of winter. McGonagall shivered slightly and pulled her robes closer around her. Her footsteps echoed in the oppressive silence. The rest of the castle might be uninhabited, but the dungeons felt abandoned. Even the ghosts seemed to shun them during the summer. But McGonagall knew there was one person, still here, who seemed oblivious to the loneliness of the place. She stopped in front of a wooden door and knocked briskly.

“Come in,” came the muffled reply.

McGonagall pushed open the door and found Severus Snape frowning intently at a potion simmering on his workbench.

“Severus, I was just going over the class registers for next term. I don’t see Mr. Potter’s name on the list of your sixth year students.”

“That’s right, you don’t,” Snape said, making an entry in the notebook beside him and not bothering to look at his colleague.

“May I ask why not?” McGonagall inquired stiffly.

Snape lowered the heat under his cauldron then turned to face her.

“I only take the most capable students in my NEWT class,” he said smoothly. “Mr. Potter is not one of them.”

“He received an ‘Outstanding’ on his Potions OWL.”

“Be that as it may, he will not be in my class.”

The two professors stared at one another in a silent test of wills. At last McGonagall spoke in a tightly controlled voice.

“Severus, I allow you to browbeat my students, but if you think I will stand by and allow you to ruin Mr. Potter’s future out of spite, you will find that you are very much mistaken.”

“So, the famous Potter charm has finally worked its magic on you, I see,” Snape said derisively.

“Don’t be insulting,” McGonagall snapped. “The boy has earned the right to be in your class. You have no grounds to exclude him.”

“I’m astonished he would even wish to continue in my class given his usually abysmal performance,” Snape said contemptuously.

“He wants to be an Auror and you know very well that NEWT-level Potions is required.”

“An Auror,” Snape sneered. “Naturally. One would have thought he’d have had enough of fighting dark wizards by now, but I suppose the allure of fame and glory is too much. Why don’t you do us all a favor, Minerva, and advise the boy to go out for professional Quidditch instead. Surely that would provide him with the adoring fans his ego craves?”

“Is that what you really think it is? Ego? Hasn’t it occurred to you that Potter may have decided, quite reasonably, that the only way he’s likely to survive is by becoming an Auror?”

“It didn’t help his father.”

McGonagall’s eyes flashed and she pressed her lips into a thin line. “I gave Mr. Potter my word that I would do everything in my power to help him become an Auror and I intend to keep that promise.”

“Unfortunately, deciding whom I admit to my class is not within your power,” Snape said.

McGonagall smiled slightly. “No, but as Deputy Headmistress, I can make your life quite miserable, you know. It’s only two more years, Severus and then he’ll be gone. I will not be. Do you really want to make an enemy of me?”

Snape’s eyes narrowed as he considered the woman in front of him. “Very well,” he said. “I will accept Mr. Potter into my NEWT class. But if he fails to live up to my standards, I will dismiss him.”

McGonagall sighed, knowing that was the best she would get from Snape. “Fair enough,” she said. McGonagall turned to go, but paused at the door.

“You know, Severus,” she said, glancing back at Snape, “I would have thought you’d know the boy better by now.”

She swept out of the room leaving the Potions Master to scowl after her.