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 of this. I’m just having some fun adding my own little corner to the amazing world she has already created.

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CHAPTER 19—SLUMMING

When Harry Potter walked into the Great Hall for Saturday dinner, Severus Snape did something he very rarely did—he smiled. Granted, it wasn’t a shiny, toothy grin like that of Gilderoy Lockhart, who had probably removed several lobes of his brain just to make room for more bits of white enamel. Instead, his expression was more of a self-satisfied smirk, the result of Snape having just this afternoon witnessed Gryffindor’s abysmal Quidditch try-outs from the library window. How could he not smile at the thought of his rival house’s most shining star plummeting to earth with his less than luminary team?

“You might want to reserve some extra pitch time for Gryffindor,” Snape told McGonagall, smug in his knowledge that he had already booked all of the prime practice times for Slytherin. “Potter’s going to be busy teaching his team which end of a broomstick is front.”

The Gryffindor Head of House narrowed her eyes at him. “At least none of the Gryffindors had to buy their places. Whatever will Slytherin do without Lucius Malfoy to purchase the team the latest broomsticks this year?”

“Irrelevant. Slytherin could keep its same gear for the next decade and it would still be better equipped than the Weasleys. By the way, Minerva, you ought to have a word with Potter about so much cronyism. Ronald and the girl? He’ll be starting his own Slug Club soon.”

McGonagall arched a thin eyebrow. “Speaking of which….”

Arriving at the table was none other than the master of cronyism himself.

“Severus, my boy,” the old man cried, slapping Snape on the back. “Just the man I was looking for.”

Snape scowled. His Head of House had made it perfectly clear throughout the course of seven years that he was never looking for him, which now meant that the old Slugball wanted something.

“I’m having a little get-together tonight…”

To which Snape was no doubt not invited.

“…I’ve invited Gwenog Jones and several other notables, but the real pièce maîtresse…”¹

Gods, he was even worse than Aurora. At least she spared him all that pretentious French babble.

“…was to be Harry Potter.”

On cue, the vein at Snape’s temple started throbbing menacingly. “Potter has a previous engagement. He’s serving detention with me tonight.”

Slughorn displayed his most winning smile. “Surely you could postpone the boy’s punishment, Severus. He can go down to your dungeons any time, but Gwenog Jones has only so many free weekends from the Holyhead Harpies. It would be such a pity if I had an incomplete set at my dinner party tonight, and just imagine of how much Hogwarts’ star Seeker would enjoy meeting a professional Quidditch player.”

Snape could certainly imagine how Potter would love pretending that he was on par with the real Quidditch stars. It was yet another reason why Snape was not going to grant him an ounce of leniency. Celebrity couldn’t buy Potter a decent Quidditch team this year, and it certainly wasn’t going to win him a free pass to one of Slughorn’s fancy dinners. He could dine with the rest of the minions. Snape would be damned if he was going to let the brat learn that he could slip out of detention just because he had members of the bloody Potter Fan Club on staff. It had been bad enough having to postpone detention once already at Dumbledore’s request. He certainly was not going to grant the same favor to Slughorn, to whom he owed absolutely nothing. No, he was going to make sure that the Golden Boy got more than a little dirty tonight as he sorted out a batch of rotten flobberworms that Snape had been saving for a special occasion.

“Your table is going to be a guest short tonight,” Snape answered. “Potter is staying with me…whether I can tolerate his presence or not,” he added under his breath.

Slughorn gave him an affronted look and then marched back to his chambers to finalize his oh-so-fancy but not quite so star-studded meal. Snape’s eyes followed him with glinting satisfaction as the old Slugball waddled all the way down the middle aisle of the Great Hall, muttering about how anyone could have so little respect for his former Head of House.

On his way out of the double doors, Slughorn crossed paths with Aurora, who was just now arriving for dinner with several seventh years. Her face fell when he stopped her to talk. No doubt he was trying to fill that empty seat Potter was leaving. Snape smirked when he saw her shake her head, causing Slughorn’s mustache to droop in disappointment. She gave him an apologetic expression, only to reveal one of relief as soon as he departed for his party.

Ha, it looked like both Slughorn and Potter were going to have to deal with disappointment tonight.

Despite Aurora’s disinterest in Slughorn’s machinations of popularity, Snape couldn’t help but notice that the new Runes teacher was accumulating a little fan club of her own. She could barely make it two steps toward the staff table without someone calling out a greeting or her stopping to talk to a student. The faculty had also marked her entrance, and several were eagerly trying to catch her eye, no doubt hoping to arrange one of those nonsense interdisciplinary units that had become so popular since the goblin sideshow with Binns. It therefore came as a great surprise to Snape when she chose to sit, not next to Flitwick or Sprout or another of the senior staff, but beside the unglamorous and unimportant Jane Dunot.

The Muggle Studies teacher also seemed startled when Aurora not only joined her at the end of the table but also struck up a conversation which lasted throughout the entire mealtime. By the end of dinner, Snape wondered if Dunot might just pass out from exhaustion. He doubted she had spoken so many words in all her years at Hogwarts as she had tonight.

After the meal was over and everyone was trailing out of the Great Hall toward their offices or common rooms, Snape caught up with Aurora just as she was saying goodnight to Dunot. He drew up behind her and breathed into her ear, “Slumming it?”

She turned. “Pardon?”

“You must have a taste for social slumming. Why else would you have turned down an evening with the Slug Club to dine with lowly Jane Dunot?”

“I think joining the Slugs would’ve been the real low,” she said with a grimace. “Besides, what’s so wrong with Jane?”

Snape cocked his head incredulously. “I can believe you didn’t want to join Slughorn, but why on earth would you voluntarily dine with Dunot?

“Why, are you jealous, Severus?” she asked coquettishly.

“No,” he said flatly. “I simply thought that you had a better social sense than that. There are people on staff worth getting to know—Heads of Houses, Order members, maybe Filch if you want help catching misbehaving students in the corridors—and then there are people not worth wasting your time and patience.”

“Oh really?” she laughed. “Care to tell me how that breakdown works?”

Snape rolled his eyes. She was as bad as the first years having to have everything spelled out for her. He pulled her by the sleeve toward the wall and out of the traffic of students and teachers exiting the Great Hall. “The only people that truly do anything around here besides the Headmaster are the senior staff—McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout. They’re the ones with the loudest voices and the biggest ears. They’re the ones who know what’s happening with the school…and what’s happening outside of it. You want to know Hagrid because he’s Dumbledore’s man. Just remember that nothing passes through his ears without it falling straight out of his mouth. Filch, Pomfrey, and Pince are worth getting to know if you need something from them, but they can be insufferable idiots—Filch and Pince especially. Pomfrey’s just an insipid gossip. All the rest—Dunot most especially—are nobodies. They’re too spineless or too witless to have an ounce of influence at this school, and they certainly aren’t of any consequence to the events in the world beyond.”

“And where do you fit into this intriguing social ladder, Severus?”

“Taking into consideration that I am a Head of House and an Order member and have also taken more House points from students than even Filch, I would think that answer would be obvious.”

She rolled her eyes. “Careful, Severus, you’re sounding an awful lot like your old Head of House. Next thing we know, you’ll be starting up the Severus Society for all the ‘right’ kind of staff members”

Snape scowled. There was no reason for her to deliver that low blow when he was simply trying to offer her some advice. “How did you manage to talk the entire evening with Dunot anyway? The only reason to get within ten feet of her is if you want a silent neighbor in the carrel next to you at the library.”

Aurora lit up. “Actually, we were talking about the most wonderful project. Just yesterday she was telling me how the students don’t get to study anything about non-British Muggles, and then we started talking about how difficult it is to learn about foreign cultures without speaking a bit of the language, and then…”

“As miraculous as it is that you spoke more than two sentences with Dunot,” Snape drawled, “could you possibly provide me with the abridged version of this conversation?”

“Fine,” she said, grinning. “I’m going to teach French.”

“You’re what?”

“French. I’m going to teach some French to the Muggle Studies classes. Jane’s asked if I could say a bit about French Muggle culture, too. The villages outside Beauxbatons weren’t magical, so we used to interact with the Muggles all the time.”

Snape pulled her back toward the staff table and away from the last of the stragglers exiting the Great Hall. “Are you out of your mind?” he hissed. “You cannot teach a Muggle Studies class.”

“But Jane and I have already started making plans.”

“Unmake them. Do you have any idea how teaching anything even remotely related to Muggles will look to the Death Eaters?”

“It’s not like I’m teaching,” she reasoned. “I’m just…guest lecturing.”

“You can’t.”

“But I want to.”

“No.”

“No? I think it’s hardly your place to tell me what I can and cannot do. The only person who can do that is Albus.”

“Damn it, woman, do you have a death wish?”

She blanched a bit at this and sighed. “Listen, Severus, I appreciate the advice. I really do, and if I get hexed to smithereens, I promise I won’t come back and blame you as a ghost. But I need to do these classes, and at this point, quite frankly, it would be terrible of me not to. I’ve promised Jane, and I can’t back out. Unless Albus tells me otherwise, I’m teaching them.” With that, she bade him goodnight and dug another foot deeper into her grave.

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FOOTNOTES: ¹centerpiece

AN: Sorry this is such a short chapter. I just write them as they come!

Despite the shortness of chapters, I should add that this is going to be a long story. (I am a Victorianist after all.) I promise that this really is a romance and that many of the promised citrusy chapters have already been written. It’s just taking me a lot longer than I expected to connect all the dots. If I had the entire finished project in front of me, I’m sure I could’ve done some condensing, but this online writing thing is such a strange beast. In the meanwhile, let me say that there will be some good promise of progress between our heroes in just a few short chapters.

Drop me an email if you’d like me to let you know when I update. It may not be as frequently with school starting.

Thanks, as always, to Trickie Woo for her continued support and to Rodger and hostwtchfleur for their reviews as well.