Hogwarts Hires New Staff
Headmistress McGonagall “We will be ready”

As the scene of the climactic battle between underground freedom fighters and Voldemort’s forces (also known as Death Eaters), Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was left a smoldering ruin last May.  “It was gutted, absolutely gutted.” One student told us.  “I don’t think it can ever be the same again,” another proclaimed.  Yet Hogwarts, like the phoenix symbol of the order of freedom fighters who reclaimed it is rising from the ashes.  Headmistress McGonagall has recently hired Damocles Belby, inventor of the Wolfbane potion to teach Potions, Emeric Switch, noted Transfiguration expert, to teach Transfiguration, and Blenheim Stalk, author of Muggles who Notice to teach Muggle Studies.

“Hogwarts students are scheduled to arrive on September first, as always,” the Headmistress told a reporter three days ago, “We will be ready.”  At first glance, her statement may appear to be hubris, but one look around the freshly repaired school and her confidence begins to look justified.  The school looks as if the battle, already being hailed as the most historic occasion since Halloween 1981 never happened, or at least happened several miles away.  “Hogwarts wanted us to repair her,” Filius Flitwick, the Charms professor explained, “She made it easier.”

The Professor Trelawney, the Divinations instructor however does not share the other professors’ rosy views.  She didn’t hesitate to tell reporters that she predicted a very bleak year indeed.  “The school will crumble down around our ears, and one among us, I shan’t say who; it will anger the fates, will surely not survive to exams.”

Regardless of Professor Trelawney’s dire predictions, the new professors seemed confidant of a good year when interviewed this week.  “I’m excited to return to Hogwarts, and honored to teach,” Switch told reporters.  “This is the place I learned it all,” Belby shared.  “I lost a dear colleague and friend in Charity, [Charity Burbage, former Hogwarts Muggle Studies professor, murdered by Death Eaters unknown] and I’m humbled to take her place,” stated Stalk.

Returning Hogwarts Professors include Professors Vector, Babbling, Sinistra, Sprout, Hagrid, Hooch, and Snape. 

“Despite (or more likely because of) previous headmasters and headmistresses’ willingness to accept controversial professors, Hogwarts has a long reputation for locating the best educators in their fields,” Headmistress McGonagall stated, “and I hope our new professors will continue in that tradition.”

Hermione passed the newspaper to Harry and Ron.  As soon as she had returned to Hogwarts, she had taken out a subscription to the Daily Prophet, because as she explained, it was always a good idea to know what the rest of the Wizarding World thought.  Harry scanned the article haphazardly and passed it to Ron.  “Hey, Blenheim Stalk, my dad’s his biggest fan.”

“It almost makes me wish I was still taking Muggle Studies,” Hermione told them wistfully.

“Hermione, you’re Muggle-born!” burst Ron.

“Yes, but it would be like taking sociology,” she explained patiently.

“Soci-what?”  Hermione just sighed.

Bodmin glided down to the table and perched between the marmalade and the pumpkin juice with three letters.  She dropped the lightest in front of Ron and the other two in front of Harry and Hermione.  Harry shook his out and a head boy badge fell out onto his lap.  “Oh dear.”  McGonagall clearly didn’t agree with Dumbledore that he had enough to be going on with.

Hermione held up her own badge.  “I wonder who the new Gryffindor prefect is,” Hermione remarked wryly, but they didn’t have to wonder long.  A little way down the table, Parvati Patil started screaming.

~*~

Minerva’s desk was covered in owls.  As more and more of them clambered through the windows, they were landing on top of each other, hooting, shrieking and ruffling feathers.  One, upon finding no space to land on her desk, landed instead on her head.  “Off,” she ordered, “get off my head.”  Instead, the bird dropped a letter onto her face.  She had stopped bothering to even open them, wondering if this was anything like what Albus had been forced to deal with when Severus had let slip that Remus was a werewolf. It was fitting at least that Severus would be the cause of yet more chaos.

A great eagle owl swooped in and landed in the middle of her desk as the other owls scrambled out of the way.  He stood up and gazed at her solemnly and she recognized the owl as Kingsley’s.  She took the letter from his beak, thinking this one might be worth reading.

Has pandemonium broken out over there too?

Kingsley

Well, it was good to know she wasn’t alone.

~*~

Unaware of the chaos caused by his son’s continued employment, Harry was finishing breakfast with Hermione and Ron as they busily scratched their orders on the order sheet conveniently attached to their Hogwarts letters with the words:

Due to the upheavals of the past few months, this letter is quite late.  We’re sure that parents and students can understand why and we request forgiveness.  For all students unable to make it to Diagon Alley at such short notice, please send the attached order form and the appropriate amount of currency to Flourish and Blots by owl order no later than August thirty-first for delivery to Hogwarts on September first.  Students also are given a month’s grace on uniforms and equipment.

Harry checked off the books he would need and decided he would get fitted for uniforms and buy a trunk later.  Ron and Hermione’s school trunks and their contents were enviably intact.  They wouldn’t have to give up a Hogsmeade weekend to shop for school supplies, potions equipment, and robes.

Tying an envelope with a request to withdraw money in it to Gringotts to Bodmin’s leg, he told her, “Take this to Gringotts, and don’t leave until they give you the money.”

He set the completed order form to the side, gulping down a bite of scrambled eggs.  “It’s good to know I’m not the only one not going to London this year.”

“From what I’ve read,” Hermione began, and Ron grimaced, “Most of the shops in Diagon Alley are hoping we won’t descend on them in droves like most years, they’re still making repairs.”

“George is up and running,” Ron commented, “and he’s thinking of hiring someone.  Lee’s working there right now, just to help out, but he’s got his own news show on the Wizarding Wireless.”

“That’s cool,” replied Harry, and well deserved.

“How’s George holding up?” Hermione asked, letting her hand unconsciously drift onto his arm.

“Not well, yeah? I mean it was Fred.”  Ron answered quietly, as if he didn’t want to be reminded that one of his brothers had died.

“Having someone around at the shop will help some,” she said comfortingly.

“Yeah,” Ron said.  “Well anyway, George says a lot of the stores are still closed.”

“So,” Harry drummed his fingers, “we’re going to have most of the students in normal clothes for the first month?  Weird.”

“Yeah.” 

~*~

Severus slunk up to Minerva’s office, his own so full of owls he was contemplating holding them for ransom.  It was the sort of despicable act their owners would consider right up his alley.  The number of owls that had mobbed him as he ate made him more than usually glad he had not chosen to dine in the great hall that morning.  He whispered the password to the gargoyle and speculated on how long it would take the students to realize she was using cat breeds, Russian blue indeed.

“Minerva, something has to be done about the owls.  I have six camping out in one of my cauldrons.  They’re everywhere.”  He wondered how boiled owl tasted as he stalked in.  Then he saw Minerva, sitting in the middle of a continuous stream of owls entering and leaving, howlers exploding and filling the room with the furious ranting of the parents of Hogwarts students.  “Surely the few hundred Hogwarts parents couldn’t have sent this much.”

“Some sent two or three.  One enterprising woman sent me six howlers and a hex,” Minerva growled darkly.  “I sent her back a very polite letter informing her that post hexes were punishable by a three month stay in Azkaban.”

“I was not aware until now that so many read the entirety of a news article.”  One line in a Daily Prophet article shouldn’t have caused such a circus.

“Or one person read it and sent letters to all their friends,” her lips had shrunk to a thin line.  "I’ve had sixteen death threats for you, Severus, two for me, fifty-seven letters calling for my resignation, and seventy-four calling for your arrest have found their way onto Kingsley's desk.”

“You want me to do precisely what about this, Minerva?”  Here it was coming.  She was going to ask him to resign.  She had to.  He was too much of a liability, like Lupin had been.  The irony hurt.

“I think we’ll have to disguise you, Severus, a glamour perhaps.”

What color there was in his face fled from it, an all the more eerie occurrence on his face than any other, because Minerva would have sworn he couldn’t become paler. His sallow skin had become waxen.  Misinterpreting his pallor, she quickly leapt to explain.  “It’s for your own protection Severus, it isn’t that we’re ashamed of you.”

But the color didn’t return to his face.  Instead he turned and sprinted out of the office, his robes billowing behind him.

~*~

When Snape burst into the Gryffindor common room, a bad tempered snarl of “I am a professor, you pompous piece of pigment” insuring his admittance this time, Harry was just tying his order form onto the returning Bodmin’s leg.  She bit him as the portrait banged into the stone wall behind it and the Fat Lady shouted her displeasure.

Snape grabbed him roughly by the arm and dragged him up out of his armchair.  “What the… Snape!”  Ron and Hermione jumped to their feet, yelling at him to put Harry down, and in Hermione’s case, demanding exactly what Snape thought he was doing, but Snape just waved their protests aside and strode out of the common room, Harry in tow.  As the portrait closed behind them, Harry saw Ron send Bodmin on her way.

Confused and angry, with his arm starting to throb in Snape’s constricting grip, Harry roared, “What did I do?”

“Nothing, Potter,” he spat out as if the words corroded his throat on the way out, “You will find out when we see the headmistress.”  Nothing except merrily gallivant through time, sleep with Severus’ mother, conceive him, and cast a glamour, in other words, nothing that hadn’t happened almost forty years previous.

Harry pried Snape’s fingers off his arm and made an aborted dash down the hall, only stopping when his adversary’s hand closed even tighter, this time around his wrist.  “Let go of me,” he snarled, yanking his arm.

“No, Potter, we are going to see the headmistress.”   The retort that Snape himself was technically a Potter himself sprang to Harry’s lips, but he held it in with effort. “You have something to tell her.”  Ordinarily Severus might have relished the sight of a bewildered, frustrated, and furious Harry Potter.

Harry tugged on his arm again, managing to pull Snape to the side and almost succeeding in topping them both to the floor.  “Fine then,” he fumed, "we’ll go to McGonagall, but Let. Me. Go.”

Severus released his wrist reluctantly.  “Professor McGonagall,” he bit out perfunctorily.

“I think you’re mistaking me for someone else, professor,” Harry shot back, pulling his arm out of reach before the professor could latch onto it again.  Snape growled and it took most of Harry’s will just to suppress the smirk trying to spread over his face.  That growl meant Harry had won, at least that round.

The pair walked in slow stiff necked silence, neither one caring to share their mutually murderous thoughts.  Potter kept shooting him looks of utmost distrust and loathing until he almost exclaimed that he could stop glaring, and that if Severus had wanted to do away with him, he would have found a way to avoid Granger and Weasley as witnesses to Potter’s apprehension.

Some base part of Harry wanted to inflict Snape with the knowledge of their shared blood, even if he shied away from the kinship himself.  His previous noble influences in giving Snape the memories and the feeling that the man had a right to know had twisted.  He hoped Snape choked on the thought that was so closely related to James Potter.

Harry and Snape were still fuming when they reached the gargoyle and Snape muttered the password to it.  Harry snorted inwardly when he heard it and pondered carrying around a list of cat breeds to read to the gargoyle from then on. The gargoyle spun open and Snape pushed him up the stairs.  As he climbed upwards, Snape prodded him hard between the shoulder blades every time he wasn’t moving to Snape’s satisfaction.

“Would you stop it?” hissed Harry, “I’m going.”  Snape prodded him once more, harder than before for good measure, but as he did so, the staircase ended and he opened the door to the headmistress’ office.

Professor McGonagall leapt to her feet and stormed over to the opening door.  “Severus, what on earth, why did you leave like that… Potter?”  Her eyes flicked from one to the other with the same confusion Harry felt.

“Potter is here to tell you why you will be unable to cast a glamour on me,” Severus snarled dangerously.  McGonagall’s confusion deepened, but Harry’s complexion had started to resemble sour milk.  “Come on, speak up Potter, surely you know the reason, you managed to achieve an Exceeds Expectations in Charms after all.”  In some still functioning corner of his mind, Harry wondered how it was possible to sound that disparaging of a good mark.

His mouth rapidly became very dry.  “You can’t cast a glamour over another glamour,” he mumbled, heart sinking.

“And can you tell me why I would have a glamour already?”  Snape’s voice was deadly soft.  Their private little secret, one Snape had been as interested in hiding as Harry had been would have another party to it.  If Harry hadn’t known how displeased Snape must be with the whole disaster, he would have accused him of planning it, just to get his revenge.

Severus clenched his jaw and gripped Potter’s shoulder painfully.  If he had to suffer through this little revelation, at least he could torture Potter with it as well.

Professor McGonagall just watched them through narrowed eyes, as if trying to divine what they were talking about from the way Harry’s hands trembled and the way the muscles in Snape’s cheek jumped.  Harry clenched his fists and straightened his back, shifting a little to try to throw Snape’s hand off.  “Because I cast a glamour on you.”

Harry hoped he would be allowed to stop there, but Snape seemed determined to extract the words from him in the most agonizing way he could.  “What glamour did you cast on me, Potter?”

Minerva observed the strange spectacle, her gaze flicking back and forth between Severus, white faced with fury, and her student, white faced with dread.  She hadn’t thought that Potter would have been afraid to face down anyone after defeating Voldemort, after, according to his own account, walking to what he thought was his death, but whtever he had to say, he was twisting with the wish not to say it.

“Occulto verum,” Harry gasped out, shaking Snape’s hand off his shoulder and stepping away from him.

For Minerva, every word either spoke simply drove her to further confusion.  Her eyes narrowed.  “Why would you have felt the need to cast a glamour designed to disguise paternity on Severus?” she asked absolutely confounded.

So Harry told her everything, about the memories Snape had given him when they had both thought the other wouldn’t survive, about meeting Dumbledore in the phantom Kings Cross, about being given the choice to go on or to go back, about finding himself on Eileen Prince’s couch in 1959, about not being able to return until he did what he had been sent to do, about their strange romance and about sleeping with Eileen, and finally about waking up and discovering that she was pregnant, and knowing exactly who that child was.  Harry knew that if he stopped talking, he’d never be able to finish and he would be back to answering Snape’s snide questions, guiding him relentlessly to the end of the tale.

All the while, Minerva’s lips compressed further and further until they were a thin colorless line.  “Tell me you’re joking, Potter, Severus.”

Severus shook his head, a pink tinge showing in his cheek.  “No, Minerva, we aren’t.”

Harry slumped into a chair in front of McGonagall’s desk, while Severus noted absently that Trelawney’s poufs had disappeared again.  “I’m sorry Professor, but why would you be casting a glamour on Snape anyway?”

McGonagall didn’t bother to correct him.  “He needs to be disguised, Mr. Potter,” she informed him, “We’ve been receiving death threats for having a death eater on staff. One man tried to send an asphyxiation jinx to Severus but he discovered it burned the envelope before it did any damage.”

Harry’s head was starting to hurt.  He shook it, trying to clear it.  “So, you were going to pretend you hired someone else, but it was going to be Snape under a glamour?”

Minerva nodded.  “It would be comforting to know the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor’s secret for once.”  Severus snorted.

A wicked idea flashed through his mind.  “You don’t have to put a new glamour on him, I just have to take the old one off.”  The same desire to see Snape squirm knowing he was James Potter’s grandson urged him to inflict Snape with his natural features.

McGonagall smiled tightly.  “Yes Potter, that would work as well,” she agreed.  “After all, this way you can vouch for him.  If he will look like you, and you both seem confidant he will, people will question you about him.” Harry winced and Snape cringed.  Harry hadn’t planned for that, not that he had planned any of it.

Severus glanced down at Potter and hissed, “Well, what are you waiting for?  Cast the spell!”

Harry nodded solemnly and lifted his wand.  “Ostendo verum,” he intoned.