Minerva sat down in Albus’s office, anxiously awaiting the moment the Polyjuice potion would wear off.

The feeling of being in the body of a colleague she had known since childhood was quite simply: bad. She had taken on many physical forms in the course of being a transfiguration master, but this particular form was not one she had ever considered- for very good reason.

And she never, ever, wanted to think about the experience again. She understood why Albus had wanted this to be done, but that did not mean she understood why it had to be her. And knowing it was necessary certainly didn’t mean she had to like it.

When Albus had asked her if she would mind doing a favor for him, she had assumed, foolishly, that it would be something along the lines of paperwork he didn’t feel like doing or maybe correspondence with someone Albus found odious. What she did not expect was to be asked to masquerade as Severus to alleviate any suspicion that Mr. Hopkirk and Severus were one and the same.

One thing she was grateful for, she supposed, was that she had not been responsible for acquiring the hair, or the potion, or the robes. Wearing Severus’s body was already enough of a violation without trespassing on top of it.

Albus, who had no such qualms over trespassing, had hand delivered the supplies to her just before she was due to go to dinner. She had gotten dressed in Severus’s clothing before dropping the hair into the potion. She then gulped it down as quickly as possible to reduce the quantity of it that she had to taste.

This order of events allowed her to avoid the trauma of changing out of her own clothes and into his while wearing his body, and thus avoid having to actually see Severus’s body. It was still an overall awful experience, but this bit of foresight saved her from having an even worse one.

Finally, finally, she felt the horrible sensation of her skin and bones melting and reforming into her proper form. She transfigured Severus’s robes into something like an outfit she owned and continued to wait for Albus to turn up.

She wasn’t sure if he had anything to discuss with her, but regardless of what he wanted, she had things she needed to talk about with him. Things like whether Severus was going to be paid for the time he spent as a student, and if he was, where the pay for the new Potions professor was going to come from. They certainly hadn’t budgeted for this at the beginning of the year.

Frankly, she rather suspected that Albus had intended for her to go to her quarters for the rest of the evening after dinner. But she figured this was a fine time to confront Albus with the realities of the budget.

She heard one of Albus’s many contraptions announce his imminent arrival and unnecessarily smoothed her robes down. She was going to enjoy putting Albus through it after the distress he had asked her to go through.

And her wife was much less likely to attempt murder if Minerva had some story of retribution to talk about alongside the trauma.

As Albus came into the room, he was preceded by the sound of his jubilant whistling. Minerva quickly cleared any signs of her anticipation from her face by thinking, briefly, of how it felt to sit at the head table in her former student’s body. She shuddered at the memory and turned to face the door.

“Ah, Minerva,” Albus said, freezing in his path to his desk. “I thought you’d be with Florence by now.”

“I’ve decided to delay going home to her so you and I could discuss a few things,” Minerva said, now wishing that she had stood nearer to the door, since Albus was now glancing over his shoulder as if debating making a run for it.

He made the right decision however, because then he finished making his way to his desk. “This won’t take too long will it? Only, I had other things I wanted to do,” he said as he fidgeted with his lemon drop jar.

“I think we both have things we’d rather be doing,” Minerva said in a voice completely devoid of sympathy and thinking longingly of the bath Florence had promised her, “but, some things should not be procrastinated.”

“Very well then, what is so urgent?” Dumbledore asked, finally committing to a lemon drop and popping it into his mouth.

Minerva finally allowed a smile to cross her face as she pulled out a hefty stack of paperwork and set it directly in front of Dumbledore with enough force that it landed with a satisfying thunk against the wood of his desk.

“The first thing we have to cover is the paperwork finalizing Professor Chen’s position as potions master and resident brewer,” Minerva moved around his desk to stand next to Dumbledore and pointed at a line on the first page. “Sign here,” she directed him, and after he signed, she flipped the page and pointed again, guiding him through the thick packet of paperwork.

Once they made it through that task, Minerva said, “See that wasn’t so bad, was it? Now another loose end from the whole ‘making Severus befriend Mr. Potter’ thing is that you still haven’t decided, officially, if you’re going to pay him for it. Now, you absolutely should pay him because you didn’t give him a choice to participate and you can’t very well fire him.”

“Of course, I’m going to pay the boy!” Albus said, “If that’s all…”

“Unfortunately, there is no money left in the budget to pay both Severus and Professor Chen, so for however long Severus is undercover, his pay will have to come from your private accounts.”

“Are you certain there’s no wiggle room in the budget?” Albus said, plucking at the stack of papers hopefully.

She batted his hands away.

“I am quite certain. If you look here,” Minerva shifted the stack of papers in front of Albus to the appropriate page, “you’ll see Severus’s pay in this column and the total cost in this column. And here I added the initial cost of wardrobe and school supplies that you already paid for-“

Dumbledore picked up the paper in question and held it closer to his eyes. Then he held it at arm’s length away and squinted at it.

“The numbers won’t change regardless of how you look at it, Albus,” Minerva said with a hint of amusement in her voice.

Albus responded, still seeking an alternative where he would not be personally responsible for Severus’s pay, that Minerva knew did not exist. They spent an entirely unreasonable amount of time going back and forth on the topic, until finally, as Minerva knew he would, Albus arranged for Severus’s pay from his personal vaults.

Really it was only fair that Albus take on the expense of Severus’s “mission”. Regardless of how important it was or was not for the war effort that Severus and Harry got along, there were other ways to accomplish that end that were not nearly so costly.

Dumbledore had clearly chosen this particular method purely for the enjoyment he would derive from watching it unfold.

With that accomplished, Minerva finally headed back to her quarters, and more importantly, to Florence, for long overdue decompressing after the horrors of this evening.

Harry woke up on Monday morning feeling better rested than he had in ages. He had not been dragged into Voldemort’s mind and his own dreams had been blessedly free of nightmares. And he had still managed to wake up first, so he had plenty of privacy to get ready.

Once he was ready to go, he sorted through his books to get his bag together for class. When he was studying in the library, his schoolbooks tended to get all mixed into the library books, and even with featherlight charms it was simply more convenient to only bring schoolbooks to classes.

By the time he was done with that, Eli, Neville, and Ron were up and getting ready for the day, so Harry decided to wait for them in the dorm.

The three of them met up with Ginny and Hermione in the common room and all headed down to breakfast together.

It was the first time in ages that Harry had gotten to eat with all his friends, and this put him in an even better mood than he was already in.

They settled in at Gryffindor table, and Harry listened to Hermione and Ginny complain about the extremely loud argument two third year girls had gotten into at 2 am. He nodded at all the right places, glad that the sound hadn’t carried to the boy’s dormitories and disrupted one of his rare nights of good sleep.

Right on schedule, the mail was delivered, and when Eli’s delivery owl dropped his package directly into his oatmeal, Harry was immensely grateful that Hedwig was much too dignified to disgrace herself with a delivery like that.

Ron laughed and said, “Alfonse, who’d you offend to get a delivery like that?”

Ginny gave Ron a look and simply said, “Errol.”

“Errol can’t help it, that owl looks perfectly capable of a clean delivery, so it must have chosen to deliver that package like that,” Ron defended himself.

Eli cleared his throat as he magically cleaned the package and said, “I go by Eli, actually, and I honestly don’t know why it would have delivered my package like that- I’m new to the country, after all.”

“Is that your middle name or something?” Hermione asked. “Only, Eli isn’t derived from Alfonse, so it’s not a typical nickname.”

Eli shrugged and said, “It’s just a name I like to go by since Alfonse is a dumb name.”

“Fair enough,” Ron said and mock toasted Eli with his now empty juice glass.

Harry glanced over and saw that Eli was unpacking what appeared to be his schoolbooks.

“So, did you get your schedule finalized with McGonagall?” Harry asked Eli.

Eli shifted the books so the group could see them clearly and said, “Yes, I am going to be taking Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology, and Potions.”

Before Harry could respond to this, he saw Ron and Hermione exchanged a glance and stand up from the table.

Pausing on their way out of the hall, Hermione told them, “Ron and I have something we want to check on before classes- so, we’ll see you later.”

They were only a couple feet away when Ginny promptly said, “Yeah, they need to check each other’s tongues out.”

Harry snorted.

“I’m so glad I know they’re dating now, it gives me a lot more material to work with when messing with Ron,” Ginny continued.

“Wait, weren’t they locked in a classroom together all day yesterday?” Neville asked.

“Yes, yes they were, Neville,” Ginny answered him.

“Then why-“ Neville began.

“Because they’re clearly obsessed with each other,” Eli said drily.

After a moment, Harry said, “Oh, Eli, I meant to ask you why you’re not taking Defense? You said you wanted to be an auror, right?”

“Yes, so, apparently the Defense curriculum in Florida is so below the Hogwarts standard I would have had to join a fourth- or fifth-year class, and as awesome as being an auror sounded, I was not willing to do that to be one. So, after discussing it with Professor McGonagall, I’m going to try and be a healer. I’ll still get to help people, but I won’t have to take several years of extra Defense to do it.”

“That sucks-“ Harry started before Ginny interrupted him.

“That definitely sucks, but we really ought to leave for class,” she said.

Looking around, Harry was surprised to see that the Great Hall was emptying of students as they left for their classes. He quickly stood up, grabbing his bag as he went.

“Guess we’ll see you after class, Eli,” Neville said as he too stood up.

“Yeah, I’ll see you then,” Eli confirmed.

The rest of them joined the crowd leaving the Great Hall, Neville and Harry heading to Defense and Ginny to Transfiguration.

After lunch, Harry, Hermione, Eli, and Ron had Potions together. Harry was more excited for a Potions class than he had been since his first year when he had finally accepted that Snape was never going to be a fair instructor and the subsequent loss of interest in Potions this acceptance had caused.

“Has anyone heard anything about Professor Chen?” Harry asked the others as they walked down to the dungeons.

Hermione, Ron, and Eli all shook their heads.

Ron said, “Well, we know she can’t be worse than Snape, am I right?”

“Never say never, Ron. What if she has the same biases Snape has, but is also incompetent at Potions,” Hermione said.

Ron appeared to think this over for a moment before saying, “Mmm, I just don’t see that happening.”

“I’m not saying it’s probable,” Hermione insisted, “but I am saying that it’s possible for her to be worse than Snape, like that old adage: prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.”

They arrived outside the classroom and queue’d up behind Terry and Padma who were bickering about something.

Eli scoffed and said, “I can’t believe the professor is late and it’s only her first day.”

At that exact moment, the classroom door opened.

“What was that Mr. Hopkirk?” Professor Chen asked as she stepped through the door.

Harry jumped at this and he didn’t seem to be the only one.

“Nothing, professor,” Eli muttered.

“I thought so. Well, come on in everyone. If you look at the board, you’ll see the seating chart and partner assignments. These will last for at least the first month, possibly longer if I feel they’re effective.”

Harry shuffled to the front of the room behind Padma and Terry. He scanned the chart and noticed that Hermione was paired with Daphne and Ron was paired with Ernie before he saw that he was paired with Eli.

He turned and made eye contact with Eli, then tilted his head towards their assigned seats in the front left of the room.

As Harry pulled his supplies out of his bag, he said quietly to Eli, “Sorry you got stuck with me. I am notoriously bad at the whole potions thing.”

“Well. I will be good enough for the both of us, then,” Eli said.

Harry hoped Eli’s school had been better with Potions than it had been with Defense, otherwise they were screwed.

The rest of the class trickled in over the next couple minutes, accompanied by groans when they realized that seats and partners were assigned.

Once everyone had arrived and taken their seats, Professor Chen stood up from where she had been seated at her desk and cleared her throat. The class instantly fell silent, and Harry sat up at attention, inking his quill to be ready to take notes.

This might be his only chance to learn Potions from someone who didn’t hate him right from the start.

“Thank you all for taking your seats quickly. Before I get into more class relevant topics, I thought I’d tell you all a bit about myself. My name is Christina Chen. I received my potions mastery at a small institution in China. Since then, I’ve travelled around the world advising programs and institutions on how to improve their potions programs. Most recently I was asked by your Director Bones to help reform the potions segment of the auror training program, and I had just finished when Headmaster’s Dumbledore plea for a replacement professor came in. And that’s the story of how I got here.”

Chen paused and surveyed the class before continuing, “Enough about me, though. As you all know, this is the last year before your NEWTs. I’ve been given a list of topics to cover, and we’ll do our best to get through them all, but I personally think it’s more important for everyone to understand a topic before moving on than it is for us to cover everything.”

This already sounded amazing to Harry.

Professor Chen lit up a projector with her wand. “First, we’ll be talking about the different categories of potions,” she waved her wand and six categories appeared on the projection, “the first is healing potions.”

She continued to lecture on the different categories of potions and their properties for the rest of the period. The first time Hermione raised her hand to ask a question, Harry had felt the residual concern that such an action would have invoked when Snape had taught the class, but Professor Chen had simply answered the question and then resumed the lecture once Hermione indicated that she understood.

By the end of the lecture, Sue and Ernie had also asked questions with the same outcome. The environment of the class, despite being held in the same classroom as always, could not have been more different than it had been when Snape taught.

“Alright class, that’s all we have time for today,” Professor Chen had concluded, “Next class will be another lecture, this time going more in depth into healing potions as a category, but the class after that will be a practical lesson, so start researching a healing potion to brew with your partner then. Class dismissed- except, Mr. Hopkirk, would you mind staying behind?”

Harry said, as he packed up his stack of copious notes, “I’ll wait for you in the hall.”

Eli was sitting stiffly in his seat and did not respond.

Harry filed out with the rest of the class, but he wondered if Eli was alright. He hadn’t taken any notes at all and hardly seemed to pay attention to the lecture at all. Eli was quite lucky that Snape wasn’t their professor anymore, because that behavior would have been nothing short of a death sentence with Snape in charge of the class.

He leaned against the wall opposite the classroom door to wait for Eli. When he saw Ron and Hermione come out of the classroom, he said, “Hey I’m waiting for Eli if you want to join me.”

Hermione grimaced and said, “I’m sorry Harry, but now’s the Prefect meeting and we have to go.”

“That’s right,” Ernie said pompously from behind her, “we really must go right away.”

Hermione shrugged helplessly and Ron said, “Sorry mate,” as they both got pulled by Ernie along with Malfoy and Padma.

Harry shrugged back as they went. He couldn’t even be annoyed at them this time, since it was clearly a real obligation. Honestly, Harry was quite glad to not need to go. He’d heard some truly terrible things about how boring those meetings were.

And, he thought, another bonus of not going was that Ernie had not tried to manhandle him. The image of Ernie towing Hermione and Ron through the hallways was an entertaining one that Harry was definitely going to describe, in detail, to Ron and Hermione the next chance he got.

After a surprisingly brief amount of time in which Harry vaguely planned what he was going to do with the rest of his day, Eli came out of the classroom looking disgruntled.

“Is everything alright?” Harry asked.

“It’s fine, I just need to ‘be more respectful’ of my professors,” Eli said, clearly not pleased.

“She didn’t take points or give you detention, then?”

“No, just a warning,” Eli said.

Harry shrugged, “Then it can’t have been that big of a deal. She probably knows you’re from the States and wanted to let you know that we do things a bit differently here.”

Eli paused and said, “Something like that.”

“I’m going to the library now, if you want to join me,” Harry offered.

“Yeah alright, I’ll go with you.”

Harry turned towards the library and set off. Eli still seemed to be in a bit of a mood, so he refrained from pestering him with conversation. They walked to the library in silence.