A Matter of Black and White

DISCLAIMER: This story is based upon the works of JK Rowling. Anything you recognize is hers. I’m making no money off this. I’m just having some fun adding my own little corner to the amazing world she has created.

* * *


CHAPTER 11—ANOTHER TERM, ANOTHER MEETING

Snape was walking to the staff room with a lighter foot than he had ever had on his way to the opening faculty meeting of the term. Staff meetings were inordinately dull events to begin with. Academics talking in circles never put him in a good mood. Up until today, however, the first conference of the school year had always been a particularly dreadful event. Time after time he had had to fight down the humiliation he felt whenever Dumbledore had announced the name of yet another Defense Against the Dark Arts hire that was not his own. The outrage had been growing exponentially in recent years as the Headmaster had put more confidence first in a nincompoop, then in a werewolf, then in a paranoid maniac, then in a Ministry toad than in him. This year, however, he could finally enjoy the jaw-drops of his colleagues when they learned that Dumbledore had awarded him his long sought after position.

Snape had arrived back at Hogwarts just that morning. He had been eager to have that hairless rat Pettigrew out of his hair, but his responsibilities with the Death Eaters had demanded that he remain at Spinner’s End up until the end of the faculty holiday. He had returned to find that Horace Slughorn had already packed up his personal belongings and made the Potions classroom his own—a point that irritated Snape no small bit. It had, however, left him with more time to prepare the new classroom he would be using to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. He had happily incinerated the inspirational posters with small, furry animals left by Umbridge and had replaced them with more accurate illustrations of his subject—witches and wizards writhing under the Cruciatus Curse and shrieking from the Dementor’s Kiss. It had been hard to tear himself away from his occupation.

He halted in front of a pair of stone gargoyles, which were engaged in a quarrel about the last year Hufflepuff had taken the House Cup. In this moment’s pause, he wondered whether his colleagues would applaud him for his new appointment—of course they wouldn’t, but their stunned silence would be just as gratifying.

Snape stepped forward, and the two statues suspended their debate just long enough to acknowledge his authority and let him pass. The staff room door flung open to reveal the rest of the staff already gathered in the dark-paneled room.

Dumbledore had never been one to run an efficient meeting, and he had always refused to conjure a business-like conference table for the staff room. Instead, he ran meetings from an elaborately-carved, claw-footed chair that might have seated Godric Gryffindor himself. Everyone else was encouraged to find a place in one of the armchairs or desk stools scattered around the room, leaving the participants far too comfortable to want to move the meeting along as quickly as Snape would have wished. McGonagall had her spot next to the Headmaster on a rigid, high-backed chair. Hagrid was filling more than his share of the settee, and Flitwick was scrunched in next to him atop several layers of cushions. Binns, meanwhile, was hovering just above a leather easy chair near the bookshelves. (Snape had made the mistake in his second year of teaching of reminding the History professor that sitting was unnecessary for a ghost. Binns’s resultant harangue about “young Potions pups” respecting their elders had demonstrated more life than Snape had seen from the specter ever before or since, and all in all he was thankful that the History teacher remembered to come down for only those meetings that had been taking place for the last several centuries.) On the other side of the room, mousy Jane Dunot blended into an armchair in the corner, belonging no more to the circle than her subject, Muggle Studies, did to the curriculum. Slughorn, on the other hand, was in the thick of things, lounging on the room’s plushest seat and talking to…

Blast and bugger, he’d almost forgotten She would be here.

Seated with her ankles demurely crossed under the hem of those outrageously white robes was the hands-down recipient of Dumbledore’s Most Unfortunate Hire of the Year Award. So much for hoping that the Hogwarts Express might have gotten derailed on its way to bringing her to the castle. Leave it to her to ruin the first potentially tolerable staff meeting of his career.

She reminded Snape of a queen holding court. She was in front of a window so that the sunlight glinted on her hair and gave her a golden crown. Her impractical white garments looked like royal regalia next to the plain black robes of the other simple teachers in the room. Ever the collector of fine and rare objects, Slughorn was fawning over her, eliciting that synthetic tinkle of her laugh. Meanwhile, every other person in the room, though not graced by her attention, was fixated on this new witch in their midst. No one even noticed him enter.

Except, of course, for Dumbledore. He nodded at Snape and then cleared his throat, silencing the teachers. “Welcome, old friends,” he said, his sparkling blue eyes sweeping the room, giving a double nod to Slughorn, “and new”—this to Aurora, who responded with a nauseatingly modest smile. “I’m so pleased to be back at Hogwarts for yet another year of educating the fine minds of tomorrow.”

“An’ we’re glad t’ have yeh back, Headmaster,” Hagrid rumbled warmly. “’Twasn’t Hogwarts here without yeh.”

The rest of the staff murmured in agreement. Dumbledore gave a slight nod of acknowledgement, and Snape could have sworn he caught the faint glint of…something…behind the Headmaster’s half-moon spectacles.

“I am, of course, not the only one returning to these hallowed halls after an absence,” said Dumbledore. “Professor Horace Slughorn has most kindly agreed to come out of retirement for us this year.”

Dunot, Vector, Trelawney, and some of the other perpetually-out-of-the-loop teachers cast curious glances at Snape. Almost the entire staff had had Slughorn as a teacher or had served with him as a colleague. They all knew that he worked in Potions.

“Which means, of course, that our own Professor Snape is moving on to other things.”

Some of Snape’s colleagues couldn’t mask the fact that they hoped he was moving on to things outside of Hogwarts.

“Professor Snape will be filling the Defense Against the Dark Arts position,” the Headmaster explained. “I do hope you have more luck with the centaurs, Severus, than did your predecessor.”

You could have heard a house-elf “pop” five floors above. Unfortunately, Dumbledore didn’t let him relish the silence for long.

“We are also welcoming a brand new face,” he continued. “Aurora Bernard, a Beauxbatons graduate and a member of the esteemed Holdahexe, will be taking Herbert Hrothgar’s place as the Ancient Runes teacher.”

She gave the Headmaster and the rest of the staff a disgustingly gracious smile that made Snape want to retch….As if anybody bloody cared about Ancient Runes or who taught it.

In the end, it turned out that Snape got his round of applause, however restrained it might have been, when Dumbledore asked the staff to congratulate all the new appointees. Having to share the recognition with the uppity newcomer rather ruined the moment, though. At least he was able to take some small pleasure in the simple statement he made when Dumbledore asked him to speak about his plans for the year.

“I will, of course, carry my high standards for Potions work to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom,” he said smoothly. “We must all agree that now is not a time for mediocrity.”

The others Heads of House—McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout—all exchanged dark looks as they foresaw their students’ Defense grades plummeting.

Not that marks wouldn’t average themselves out in other areas, Snape thought sourly, rather spoiling his appreciation of his colleagues’ anxiety. Potions scores would soar as soon as students figured out that Slughorn could be bought off with crystallized pineapples, and no doubt the Queen of Self-Esteem would give inflated grades and wretched little smiley faces to every one of her students’ translations.

“Horace, is there anything you would like to share?” Dumbledore pressed on.

“Yes, of course, Albus.” The rotund little man clapped his pudgy hands together. “I’m sure you’ll all be thrilled to hear that Hogwarts’ finest shall once again have the opportunity of joining the Slug Club.” He nodded regally as if he were performing some tremendous service for the school.

Snape let out an unstifled snort. Thrill was hardly the emotion he felt for a club—run by his own former Head of House no less—that had overlooked him throughout his school years. He hoped that Crabbe and Goyle would reinstate Hogwarts’ less official Slug Club, the one which consisted of roughing up all of Slughorn’s over-achievers and suck-ups.

Dumbledore next opened the floor to She-Who-Most-Certainly-Would-Have-Been-In-The-Slug-Club-Had-She-Not-Been-At-Beauxbatons. Now that she was center stage, she glowed enough to provide her own spotlight. Like a little pageant witch, her blue eyes met those of her audience with the confidence of someone who had never received so much as a cross look from another living being. Ever the teacher, Snape scowled at her just for the sake of her education. She rattled some sunshiny drivel about being happy to be here…blah, blah…educating young minds…blah, blah, blah…and partnering with her fellow colleagues.

Good, let someone else have to suffer through all that pleasantness.

“The Holdahexe believe in the importance of interdisciplinary studies,” she went on. “I think it’s especially important for students to see the applicability of Ancient Runes to other fields—History, obviously, but also Transfiguration and Herbology and even Magical Sport. There are all sorts of runic texts with information about what would have been everyday knowledge from the time they were written—potions receipts, charms manuals, astronomical charts, and the like. I’d love to work with anyone who’s interested on creating some interdisciplinary units for our classes.”

Several of the faculty were already nodding in eager agreement. Pushovers.

“Excellent, Aurora,” Dumbledore said warmly. “I’m eager to see what brews of your vision. Now, shall we move on to regular business?”

Filch sat a little straighter on his little wooden stool and cleared his phlegmy throat.

“First off, Minerva has once again proven her brilliance in her role as Deputy in Charge of Keeping Her Doddering Old Head on Task. She has provided us with the school year calendar, including holidays, Hogsmeade outings, and Quidditch matches. I see that Gryffindor and Slytherin will be clashing brooms first…an exciting start of the season to be sure.”

Exciting perhaps, but Dumbledore shouldn’t be counting his old house’s Quidditch Cups before they were won. Potter might be Captain this year, but Snape doubted he could gather an ounce of talent out of the rest of his classmates. Snape had seen the Gryffindors’ pickup games of late. The youngsters had about as much agility on a broom as Hagrid had grace in a china shop. Potter was about to learn that celebrity wasn’t everything if he didn’t have a team to back him up.

As the faculty passed around the parchment calendars with McGonagall’s neat but cramped writing in perfectly measured date boxes, Filch raised his hand to speak. Dumbledore, however, ignored the caretaker’s flagpole arm and started passing around another piece of parchment. “The next item I have for you is the patrol signup. Please note that in light of current events, I have increased the number of patrols, and that I expect everyone to participate equally in the sign-up.” He shot a savvy-stern look a Sinistra, who was infamous for complaining that patrols kept her away from her star gazing. “Walking the castle and grounds might not be your ideal way of spending an evening, but it’s a necessary task if we are to fulfill our sacred charge of protecting this school and its students. Besides,” he added with a little twinkle, “you never know what you might find. Just the other day, I had a jolly time in an Anti-Gravity Room I discovered on the fourth floor. It was like flying on a broom but without the chaffing!”

Hooch’s yellow eyes narrowed skeptically at the suggestion that some other means of flying might be an improvement upon her broomsticks. Filch, meanwhile, reached high into the air as if he were grasping at a flying machine that only he could see.

Dumbledore went on: “In addition to the patrols, I have increased that castle wards with Anti-Intruder Jinxes. Everyone should also note that visitors must be approved by either Minerva or myself and should be registered with Hagrid.”

Filch was straining and grunting now like he was passing a pumpkin. “Please, Professor,” he interrupted, “in light of these new security measures….”

Dumbledore gave into the inevitable. “Yes, Argus?”

“Since we’re supposed to be protecting the school, Headmaster, I would like to add a few things to the list of banned objects.” He procured a brightly colored mail order catalogue that had been rolled up in his inside pocket. “Under penalty of detention or confinement to the dungeons,” he declared in a lofty tone somewhat deflated by his gravelly voice, “students are forbidden from possessing…” He opened to the first page. “…Portable Swamps, Canary Creams, Wildfire Whiz-Bangs…” He flipped to the next page. “…U-No-Poo, any items sold in Skiving Snackboxes….”

With a look toward the heavens, Dumbledore interjected, “Might I assume that you are banning the entire inventory of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes?”

Filch’s face bunched into a thousand pouting wrinkles. “Well, yes, but don’t you think, Headmaster, that everyone would be well to hear the specific items so they can be on the lookout?”

“Why don’t you leave the catalogue in here so that everyone might study the inventory as much as they need?” Filch reluctantly creaked over to the center of the room to a table where everyone was sure to find the catalogue of contraband items. Meanwhile, Snape caught the Headmaster whispering to McGonagall, “Pity, I found the Found the Canary Creams rather uplifting.”

Hypocrite.

“One other matter for security,” Dumbledore went on. “I would like someone to chaperone the journey from King’s Cross to Hogwarts this year. I worry that having our entire student body gathered on one train without any supervision might be too tempting a target for those who wish us ill.”

Sprout gasped at the thought of anyone attacking students on their way to school, while Sinistra, Dunot, and some of the other second-rate faculty with spines like jelly wands sank into their chairs and avoided the Headmaster’s eye. They needn’t have worried, though, because Slughorn spoke up immediately. “I’d be delighted to do it, Albus,” he said with a little tug at his gold-buttoned waistcoat. “It will give me a chance to do some recruiting for the Slug Club.”

Bloody hell.

The rest of the meeting was typical business. Sprout complained that Snape was requesting too much mandrake root for his classes. McGonagall and Vector debated whether they ought to be teaching toward O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. requirements or toward things more applicable to real-world practice. Sinistra, meanwhile, whined that she simply couldn’t take another patrol this month without missing some drop-everything-and-hand-Hogwarts-over-to-the-Dark-Lord lunar eclipse.

Finally, the meeting drew to a close and Dumbledore summoned the house-elves to procure some extra-sweet cream cakes, tea, and strawberry wine for the social with which the faculty began each year. It would have been Snape’s cue to exit had it not been for a standing threat the Headmaster had put toward him in his second year: Leave the party first and he’d find himself serving as Madame Pomfrey’s personal assistant for the First Year Sex Talk. Forced to weather a half hour of the staff’s over-rated socializing, Snape slunk over to the bookshelves and started examining the section devoted to faculty publications. His eyes instinctively went for a thin black book with silver-scripted letters, reading,

Judging the Quick and the Dead:
The Brewing, Usage, and Symptoms of the Draught of Living Death
by Severus Snape

—his thesis for becoming a Master Brewer.

Next to his book, a well-worn volume on allergy decongestants by a former Healer named Snodgrass was jutting out from the straight row of neatly arranged spines. Flitwick must have been having problems with ragweed again—he never put things back in their proper places. Snape pushed the book of remedies back in line and then gave it an added nudge, giving his own work the appearance of having been recently drawn from the shelf.

With some satisfaction, he noticed that the volume on the other side of his publication was collecting dust. It was a book with a glossy dust jacket and an odd coffee-table shape that promised lots of pictures inside. The spine read:

Prominent Potions Masters of Today:
Their Secrets, Their Successes, and How They Got Their Starts
by Horace Slughorn

Snape knew how most of the brewers inside had gotten their starts—with the cronyism of the Slug Club. The book had simply been an excuse for Slughorn to reacquaint himself with some of his more influential former students and to make a few more name-dropping-worthy contacts to boot. One time when Snape had been in a particularly masochistic mood, he had flipped through the pages to try and understand what set these “prominent potions masters” apart from himself, who had once again been forgotten by his former Head. He had discovered the primary differences were whiter teeth and more extravagant lifestyles. Slughorn had a way of spending half of each chapter discussing how comfortable and pineapple-filled his visits in the home of each brewer had been. It was hardly groundbreaking scholarship, and it was no wonder that it seemed to have gone untouched for years.

Much to Snape’s discontent, however, the same professors who knew well enough not to waste their time with Slughorn’s printed drivel were lapping up his first-hand accounts of his close personal friendships with every notable witch and wizard since Merlin. Sprout, Flitwick, and Vector were all oohing and ahhing over every name Slughorn mentioned. He had worked up such a lineup of famous personages that he could have dropped Ernie Prang’s name and the crowd would have assumed he was some handsome and wealthy squire rather than the driver of the Knight Bus.

Wasn’t there any one of his colleagues with a lick of sense? Snape surveyed the room for Trelawney and Binns, neither of whom fell into the sensible category but both of whom were generally good for an early exit from staff meetings. Trelawney would usually make some apocalyptic prediction about Quidditch players flying to their deaths through flaming Quaffle hoops and then make a hasty retreat back to her tower before McGonagall threatened to take a broom to her for her foolishness. This evening, however, the sham-seer was deeply engulfed in the strawberry wine and muttering to herself about allowing livestock in the staff room. Her comments were, of course, just loud enough to be heard by Firenze, who was discussing the Forbidden Forest’s Acromantula population with Hagrid.

With one possibility for reprieve exhausted, Snape scanned the room for the History professor, whose ability to make small talk usually consisted simply of lecturing young teachers about not taking his chair. Binns was never good at mixing with the living (an activity, notably, that excluded teaching, where he seemed oblivious to the presence of his bored-witless students). Somewhere in the midst of interaction with flesh-and-blood souls, the ghost would get an expression like that of a man who had just realized that he had boarded the wrong train. Then the specter would make a hasty retreat back to his classroom, where he could spend yet another year of eternity regurgitating the same names and dates that were so deathly boring that it was no wonder the History teacher had failed to mark his own passage into the afterlife.

Given Binns’s ineptitude for anything remotely lively, it therefore came as a complete shock when Snape realized that the History professor was not only still present at the party but was also socializing with none other than Miss Light and Life herself, who had been making a bright and bubbly path from one new colleague to the next.

Snape ogled at her latest victim. Was he…? No, certainly not! But he was…he was laughing!

“…And I happen to know for a fact,” Binns was saying with a conspiratorial chuckle, “that the goblin rebel Urg the Unclean needed no other weapon than his own flatulence.” The specter turned a translucent shade of pink at his own crudeness but seemed to be reveling in the naughtiness nonetheless.

“It’s a good thing Alguff the Awful didn’t have a persuasion toward anarchy,” his blonde companion giggled. “Selling his sweat for Dungbombs already made him a weapon of mass destruction.”

Bodily function jokes from the China Doll? Now that surprised Snape. He would have had her pegged for Miss Manners herself. Then again, she was being inordinately rude by sidetracking his surefire bet out of this inane social. He glared at her as she laid on another layer of smiles and charms and mentioned to Binns how delightful it would be to partner in that ridiculous co-teaching project of hers.

“Good of you not to hex her just yet, Severus.” Snape turned. The straight tartan pole that was Minerva McGonagall was at his shoulder, following the path of his glare.

Snape made a noncommittal “humph.” After all, it wasn’t like he hadn’t come close to casting at least a Lip-Sealing Jinx on his undesired protégée.

“What in heavens does Albus think she can do that you can’t?”

“I can hardly say,” he replied coolly. Maybe the Headmaster knew his old spy wasn’t long for this world or his service. It didn’t bode well that he was already telling the other Order members about someone who, as far as Snape was concerned, didn’t deserve to make it out of her trial phase of membership.

“She seems so young,” McGonagall remarked, still observing how the new teacher was making earnest, energetic plans for recreating a goblin battle using runic history texts.

Snape thought “naïve” would be the better word. She didn’t even know that Binns was just about the last professor at Hogwarts that anyone would want to share a class with. His lectures were as coma-inducing to adults as they were to students.

“Of course, I’ve seen her personnel file,” the Deputy Head continued. “She’s not that much younger than yourself. Maybe it’s just that you seem so much…older.”

“You’re one to talk,” he shot back automatically with a tried and true McGonagall insult.

The thin line of the Transfiguration teacher's lips never wavered. “Whatever it is you’re teaching her, Severus,” she said darkly, “I hope it works.”

At that moment, the subject of their conversation came bouncing over to them. “Severus,” she said with playful chiding. “You didn’t tell me congratulations were in order.”

“Pardon?”

“Defense Against the Dark Arts—you didn’t mention it was a new job. Congratulations.”

Snape stared blank-faced at her. Of all the people to mark his promotion….

“What were you in before? Potions?” she rattled. “At least you’ll be getting out of those dungeons. That’s where the Potions classrooms are, aren’t they?”

Snape nodded dumbly. Slughorn was calling her over to tell her about some over-rated Swiss ambassador he knew.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said to Snape and McGonagall. “Minerva, we’ll have to chat about doing a class together. The Holdahexe have some wonderful Transfiguration spells. Severus, congratulations again.” Then she floated on her pink cloud way to socialize with the Slughorn contingent, blissfully unaware of any of the more serious events that would come with this next year.

McGonagall’s gaze followed her with cat-like assessment. “Lovely girl,” she said at last. “You’ll have a hell of a time keeping her alive.”